Marks & Spencer revives St Michael brand after 21-year absence

Marks & Spencer is reviving the St Michael brand after a 21-year absence, as vintage clothes find a new audience in younger generations.

The retailer said that it intends this year to start selling menswear using the vintage label first launched in 1928.

While M&S has not yet decided to officially relaunch the brand, it will be selling two items of St Michael menswear clothing - a rugby shirt with the St Michael logo on the front, and a sweatshirt in two colours - both of which appeared at a preview event earlier this week.

Marks & Spencer scrapped the label in 2000 in an effort to turn around the retailer's fortunes after profits slumped by 50pc.

But items from the collection have since proved popular among shoppers on online vintage clothes stores eBay and Depop. There are currently just under 16,000 "St Michael" tagged items of clothing on eBay and around 6,000 on Depop, including items such as 1970s paisley shirt dresses and 1940s woollen skirts, typically selling for between £5 and £25.

A spokesman said: “Nothing says quality like the words St Michael. We think our customers will love our three modern heritage-inspired products when they land later this year.

"We aren’t relaunching the brand but we’re having some fun with our Archive to bring today’s customer iconic menswear pieces.”

It came as the company signalled it would seek to sell more clothes online as part of a revival plan being pushed through by chairman Archie Norman and boss Steve Rowe. Under its recent overhaul programme, M&S has closed or relocated almost 60 shops and cut 7,000 jobs.

Last month, the company revealed that sales of clothes and homeware were up by around 92pc in the first half of 2021 compared with last year. Sales were just 2.6pc lower than in 2019.

M&S has hiked its profit forecasts for the full year, saying it is on track to beat its earlier guidance of between £300m and £350m. The move sent shares to their highest level in almost 18 months. The stock has almost doubled since the pandemic first hit, with M&S now worth £3.6bn.

Demand for second hand clothes and vintage items has ballooned during the Covid crisis.

Etsy earlier this year swooped on British fashion start-up Depop in a $1.6bn (£1.2bn) deal, a company which was launched a decade ago and had since grown to have 26m active users spanning 150 countries, the majority of which are under 26.