Seven For All Mankind Opens on Paris’ Rue Saint Honoré, With Big Fashion, Lifestyle Ambitions
PARIS — Seven For All Mankind is setting down stakes in Paris, hoping to use a retail renaissance in the city to reposition the beloved jeans brand as more fashion forward and reignite its growth.
It’s the first part of a plan under Sacha Gomez de Zamora Ford, who took the reins as global president last November, after 14 years in positions on the brand’s sales and product side, culminating as vice president of wholesale and business development. Following a brief departure, Ford rejoined with the mission to transform the company from a premium denim brand into a fashion and lifestyle label.
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Ford looks to Acne’s transformation from a small Swedish jeans label to a luxury fashion house with a spot on the Paris calendar, and Loewe’s mix of layering new storytelling while keeping the house’s core artisanal codes, as examples of where he wants to steer Seven.
“Our humble playbook is to actually use what luxury brands are using, but focusing on denim as our bags or shoes, because if you look at the luxury world, they over invest in the storytelling, in the fashion, in bringing new consumers to the table,” Ford said.
“What we need to do is elevate our core most,” he said, noting that first they will focus on improving product and putting on a fashion twist, to drive excitement and interest into the brand.
The second Paris location is a homecoming of sorts. It’s close to where the brand’s first store in Europe was located before it was sold by VF Corp. in 2016.
“Coming back to Paris is an internal and external sign of where we’re going,” said Ford, citing the city as the busiest and most important fashion week currently buzzing in a way London, Milan and New York are not.
The opening will feature an installation of neon tubing lit up in red, a nod to the company’s red carpet roots in Los Angeles as well as a new declaration. “Red is very bold,” Ford said. “It’s a confidence thing.”
The 750-square-foot spot is prime real estate at 215 Rue Saint Honoré, nestled between Balenciaga and Dior, though it is only a two-year commitment to the space as they overhaul their global long-term retail concept. It features warm woods and lapis lazuli chairs from artist Pablo Octavio.
“It’s all part of the journey of becoming relevant in the fashion business,” he said. “You are in a fashion location and it’s about sharing, both internally to our team and externally to the world, that we’re in the process of getting there.”
Bringing on model Devon Lee Carlson for its fall 2024 campaign was Ford’s first move to establish new visual codes. He’s also hired a new creative director whose name remains under wraps. Ford will divulge only that the designer comes from a “non-denim space” with no experience in the category and is trying to rethink everything Seven.
“If you want to transform the brand from a denim brand to fashion anchored in denim, you need a different perspective,” he said. It’s not just about changing the product; it’s about creating a creative ecosystem around the brand that will not alienate the deep-pocketed elder Millennial that is the brand’s core demographic while also appealing to the next gen.
“We have work to do in terms of brand relevance, in terms of product, and in terms of exciting and delighting our customers more,” he said.
The average consumer doesn’t really differentiate between high street and high-end denim, making it difficult to stand out in the crowded market and build brand loyalty, Ford asserted.
Still, some of its main competitors have less brand recognition outside of the U.S., while Seven For All Mankind has more than 100 stores worldwide through both directly owned and franchise models including outposts in markets as diverse as Hong Kong, Mexico and Brazil, among others. There are currently 12 full-price stores in Europe and 25 in the U.S.
“We basically cover the world from a branded perspective. We are the best-known brand globally,” he said. The brand crossed $210 million in net sales in 2023, Ford said.
His first move in the C-suite was to unify the independent European and U.S. arms to create a global organization with aligned goals and a more coordinated seasonal calendar.
Though L.A.-born, the brand is now headquartered is in Switzerland, with sales, marketing, retail in New York, e-commerce and additional retail in L.A. Seven For All Mankind sits under the Delta Galil umbrella, which purchased the company along with the Ella Moss and Splendid brands from VF Corp. for a combined $120 million in 2016.
The company is in the process of signing a new architectural firm that will be tasked with unifying and upscaling the brand’s interior concepts. Ford wants spaces to have core codes while adapting to different locations, much like Jonathan Anderson has done with Loewe’s retail around the world.
“We are an organization that, up until now, has been very transactional. We have to add the experiential piece,” he said.
As the brand coalesces its new image, it is not looking to open more stores but instead to double the floor space and upgrade its existing stores in key marketing including Milan, London, New York and L.A., before exploring new geographies. Later he has his eye on strengthening their presence in mainland China and eventually expanding to Japan and South Korea.
Seven For All Mankind will maintain the price point of $200 to $250 for its core offering, and is developing more premium product lines with deeper storytelling. “It’s about reaching out to the tastemakers, and tastemakers tend to like nice products. Nice products tend to be expensive,” he said of the offerings to come.It represents their investment in growing ready-to-wear; the company has doubled its assortment in the category for fall 2024.
Looking ahead to spring 2025, looks include studded jeans, a crisp white button-down dress and trenchcoats with a modern classic focus.
They will also expand more deeply into leather including jackets, as well as accessories including shoes and handbags. Those will be priced accessibly, he said, because in a world of $5,000 handbags, “you are leaving a lot of normal consumers behind.”
Ford is eager to reinvent the brand, not retread old styles of its heyday in the early 2000s.
“We’re not playing the nostalgia in any sense or form,” he said. “You can leverage your history, which is great; we have to get consumers to love [the brand] and that’s not through replication.”
That early feedback from buyers to the new direction has been positive, Ford said. “From a wholesale perspective, you have to build the credibility over time and over seasons. So that’s why we’re using our stores to accelerate and talk directly to consumers, and then wholesale will come afterward.”
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