The £39.50 dress is the secret to M&S’s fashion comeback – here are the best
If you went to a pub, a park or a party in the UK this bank holiday weekend, the chances are you saw a woman wearing a £39.50 dress from Marks and Spencer.
The department store posted its best results in years last week, a boost that included an 11.5 per cent rise in clothing and home sales to £3.72 billion. And after a long-held tradition of fashion editors writing endless articles about how M&S should set about regaining its clothing kudos, the secret in the end turned out to be simple – make a huge collection of frocks in styles that appeal to all ages, tastes and sizes at a price we can’t resist.
Browse the M&S website or any of its stores today and you will find a vast array of dresses all priced at £39.50, a number the brand has declared “our ultimate sweet spot”.
The bestseller in M&S’s line-up of £39.50 hits is the floral midaxi tea dress in yellow, blue, black and white abstract floral print, with puff sleeves and a nipped-in waist, which flares gently into a long, but not floor-sweeping, skirt. It’s a design that speaks to the look that dominates the wardrobes of middle-class British women right now, almost always worn with white trainers and perfect for a trip to the theatre or a day out at the Chelsea Flower Show. Fifteen thousand have been snapped up so far and the reviews for the dress on M&S’s website confirm the hype.
“The dress felt perfect for summer,” noted one customer; “Very flattering,” declared another. “Felt vibrant and alive,” said somebody else – praise indeed.
You don’t have to be a floral-frock aficionado to find a £39.50 number to press your buttons. M&S says some of its success has come from being bolder in embracing fashion-forward styles. Indeed, anyone who loves Ganni’s effortless Scandi-cool look might be surprised to find dresses in M&S that tick their boxes this season, from a white cotton puff-sleeved midi to a tiered gingham number.
A strappy lime design is edgier than anything I’ve ever seen in M&S before – its smocked waist is exactly what upscale labels, which sell frocks for 10 times the price, are doing this summer. Meanwhile, I could imagine a young Kate Moss wearing the button-through linen dress with a minimalist 1990s feel. It’s little wonder, then, that 300,000 £39.50 dresses have been sold so far this year.
But why £39.50? It’s this “holy grail” number that is credited with driving the M&S dress boom. “Over the past two years we’ve been laser-focused on getting the style and pricing [of dresses] right for the M&S customer,” says Maddy Evans, womenswear director.
“Customers now come to M&S knowing they will find something stylish for their budget.” She observes that the £39.50 “sweet spot” includes “dresses with forward-looking print and colourways, made using fabrics that are versatile to dress up or down. It’s a price point that they trust is going to give them great cost-per-wear.”
Off the shoulder puff sleeve blue floral, £39.99, H&M; Blue and pink floral viscose, £39, Nobody’s Child; Linen Blend Striped Midi Waisted Dress, £39.50, M&S
Budget? Cost-per-wear? M&S executives have not only finally got fashion right, but have done it in the midst of a cost of living crisis. Indeed, it feels laughable now that the “sweet spot” price point getting the fashion industry excited a few years ago was said to be £300.
Of course, everyone’s financial situation is different, but for the average M&S customer, £39.50 feels not so cheap that it’s going to be poor quality or made unethically, but not so expensive that you need to think twice about adding one to your basket en route to the food hall for a £12 dine-in deal. The average spend on food per week per person in the UK has now climbed to £40.70, so £39.50 dips in just underneath that, undoubtedly a psychological advantage to swinging a purchase.
While M&S has found £39.50 is its ideal dress price, other high-street names are wooing us with similarly seductive dress-price formulas. At H&M there are plenty of £17.99 bargain dresses, but the pieces that feel a bit more special all seem to come in at £39.99. At John Lewis, own-brand dresses often come in at upwards of £65, but in the Anyday range – created to be more competitive on value – key designs cost between £32 and £48.
Pink textured, £35.99, Mango; Green floral strappy, £32.99, Zara; Linen blend olive, £39.90, Uniqlo
At Nobody’s Child, the eco-dress label that M&S partnered with when it first dabbled in selling brands other than its own, there is a plethora of pretty tea dresses for £39. Zara has a special knack for creating the summer dress every woman in Britain wants. The ubiquitous polka-dot dress it made in 2019, tellingly, came in at £39.99. This year, some of its sweetest offerings are priced at £32.99 or £35.99, although it’s also confident enough to price some brilliantly versatile options at £49.99. Uniqlo’s £39.90 linen-blend dress has the square neckline, easy shape and puff sleeves we seem to adore – you could just buy it in the four colours it comes in and that would be summer sorted.
Waistcoats, colourful tailoring and boho crochet have all been touted as 2023’s big summer trends, but all the women of Britain really want, after all, is a great £39.50 frock.
More sweet-spot dresses on the high street
Smocked Strappy Midaxi Dress, £39.50, M&S; Pure Cotton Geometric Midaxi Waisted Dress, £39.50, M&S
Cotton Rich Puff Sleeve Midi Tiered Dress, £39.50, M&S; Pure Cotton Printed Maxi Tiered Dress, £39.50, M&S; Pure Cotton Checked V-Neck Midi Tiered Dress, £39.50, M&S; Ditsy floral mini, £38, John Lewis Anyday
Printed V-Neck Midi Waisted Dress, £39.50, M&S; Linen Blend Striped V-Neck Midi Tiered Dress, £39.50, M&S
Pure Cotton Printed Maxi Tiered Dress, £39.50, M&S; Pure Cotton Round Neck Maxi Tiered Dress, £39.50, M&S; Floral V-Neck Strappy Midi Waisted Dress, £39.50, M&S; Linen Blend V-Neck Midi Column Dress, £39.50, M&S
