EXCLUSIVE: Club Monaco Is Going Back to ‘Great, Simple,’ Quality Roots
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Club Monaco is entering its next era.
The creative shift — helmed by new chief merchandising officer Courtney O’Connor; new head of women’s design Shawn Reddy, and a new design team — harkens back to Club Monaco’s Canadian American root and late ‘90s and 2000s heyday as a resource for high-quality wardrobing with a strong design point of view and sharp price point. Customers can expect the return of higher-quality fashions, like its signature wool outerwear and modern, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy-inspired wardrobing, with newness expanded into a strong array of knitwear, including a luxe cashmere program; feminine-tinged silk dressing; modern suiting, and more ’90s minimalist-minded layers.
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The revamp is happening under private equity firm Regent L.P., which acquired Club Monaco from Ralph Lauren in 2021.
Club Monaco’s comeback kicks off Wednesday with the debut of its spring 2024 campaign, followed by the launch of its robust fall 2024 collection later this year.
“The vision is so clear. It really is to just go back to the good days of Club Monaco when the clothes were just great, simple. It’s such a unique opportunity to be in because where we came from, we were in that contemporary rat race and it wasn’t serving either of us,” O’Connor told WWD.
O’Connor joined Club Monaco in September 2022 after cutting her teeth in the industry for two decades at the likes of Neiman Marcus, Ralph Lauren and Saks. She was followed in April 2023 by Reddy, who most recently was the head of Derek Lam 10 Crosby.
Both O’Connor and Reddy told WWD they were excited by the Club Monaco roles, and reintroducing the brand, due to its whitespace opportunity in the market.
“It’s a simple proposition, right? It’s for the girls that want to wear Toteme, The Row. We’re going to be there and be super, super less expensive, as well as 30 percent less than those contemporary brands. [Spring ranges from $38 to $598, with fall going up to $1,200.] It’s this great space that we’re in, and we can offer really good quality at that price point. We don’t have to worry about the contemporary landscape of competing in price there and dealing with all that nonsense,” O’Connor said.
The goal is to reelevate the brand and get Club Monaco back into global shoppers’ minds, O’Connor said. She was brought on by Regent (which also backs Drybar, Intermix, Escada, Cheddar News and more) after the firm “stabilized the brand” to overhaul its product strategy, cultivate a successful culture and transform the business.
“We’re really like the crown jewel in all of this. For them, the first year was about stabilizing the business — they wanted to make it profitable again. Club Monaco was losing a ton of money under Ralph Lauren. They wanted to turn a profit within a year,” O’Connor said. “They didn’t come in here and lay a bunch of people off, but more from SG&A control — overspending on unnecessary things, so that was year one.” The company declined to comment on retail operations, but recently shut the doors to Club Monaco’s Vancouver flagship.
“By the time I came in, they were really ready to move forward with a merchandising strategy and lead with product. This year, spring will be the first collection that I worked on, basically without a design team,” O’Connor said.
Club Monaco was once a sought-after brand, said Jessica Ramírez, senior research analyst at Jane Hali & Associates. But over time, “it lost its luster.”
“It was a very beautiful brand when we knew there was quality, we knew that there was design, we knew it was on-trend, and the price was very right for where it stood in the market. After the sale from Ralph Lauren, it just lost its way. The design element isn’t necessarily there anymore…the quality isn’t there,” Ramírez told WWD ahead of Wednesday’s debut.
While skeptical of the revamp under a private equity firm (due to Regent’s troubled Intermix) — there is an opportunity due to consumer interest in ’90s supermodels and the brands they represented — Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Armani — which fit into product aesthetics that are trending today.
In order to revamp Club Monaco, Ramírez said the product quality needs to match the price point, while at the same time the brand would needs to engage shoppers through in-store experiences and a lifestyle approach.
Those are things the new Club Monaco team has worked to center as part of their revamp. For instance, the uptick of better quality materials — namely cashmere, silk, Italian wool and 100 percent leather for fall — cut into more youthful, and simple but desirable silhouettes that will expand the brand’s base without alienating former loyal customers.
Pricing plays a major role and is about 30 to 40 percent less than legacy department store brands and 25 to 30 percent more expensive than mid-tier and direct-to-consumer brands, according to the brand. The goal is to attract lapsed customers who previously shopped the brand but stopped when “the product catalog downtrended,” Club Monaco said, while recruiting new customers, especially young professionals and luxury consumers looking for affordable, elevated fashions.
“The brand, which changed over the past five or seven years, just lost so many people. So we’re really trying to attract them back and be a resource for them.…A lot of us used to wear Club Monaco and want to wear it again because it’s such an attainable price and great quality product, but the design wasn’t there,” Reddy told WWD.
Starting in May, O’Connor said customers will start to see smatterings of Reddy’s influences before his first full fall collection hits stores in August. The spring collection was said to be 80 percent new pieces, with fall having 94 percent.
“This year is going to be a year of learning for us. Unfortunately, Club Monaco was making bad clothes for a lot of years now. We need to get the people back in who will be looking to us as a resource,” O’Connor said.
Both stressed the importance of strategically bringing newness to customers via fashions rooted in Club Monaco’s previous “fashion insider” aesthetic and its quiet-luxury roots in historical design signatures rewritten for today with elevated fabrications at an accessible price point.
“I started last April and was able to evaluate the process and rebuild the whole design team. They come from excellent backgrounds and they fully get it,” Reddy said. He and his team are committed to not only designing relevant styles they themselves would wear, but are working closely with O’Connor and her merchandising team to align customers’ needs.
Reddy described the Club Monaco fall collection as harkening back to late ‘90s and early 2000s campaigns, with inspirations further stemming from the timeless style of Bessette-Kennedy.
System dressing and versatile layers are key, as seen through the collection’s expanded emphasis on investment layers like suiting, outerwear (a strong return of the brand’s well-known Italian wool coats) and cashmere layers, with a deeper dive into woven and knitwear styles. Each silhouette upholds inspirations of ‘90s minimalism with easy-to-wear silhouettes with specialty design details and a mostly neutral palette.
“These things that she knows and expects from the brand, so it shouldn’t be shocking. It’s just that the styles are refined, the styling and approach is refined and it feels more relevant and modern,” Reddy said, pointing out a great 100 percent leather cropped trench (retailing for $598 or 658 Canadian dollars); classic black cashmere turtlenecks (noted to be a fundamental layer the brand has been missing in recent years); tweedy jackets; easy silk layers, and “not your grandma’s” tailoring.
“Overall, there’s a clear streamlined quality to a lot of the product that feels a little more appropriate for younger customers,” Reddy said, adding that the business is now pushing itself to reclaim its ethos of being a brand for discovery via timeless yet sartorial design elements. For instance, an Italian wool twill black jacket with asymmetrical closure and hidden zip underneath. This is also seen through the collection’s miniskirts or herringbone wool bomber; pops of color (on-trend red and burgundy), and purposeful reduction of prints (with textural accents replacing them).
O’Connor said the brand is looking to make “modern wardrobe icons.”
“What you get here are pieces that are somewhat familiar, but where Shawn has returned his design point-of-view to the brand, so everything is thoughtful down to the trim or how the sleeve is shaped. So yes, it’s these classic forever pieces but everything has something special to it,” O’Connor said.
The new Club Monaco value proposition lies in the quality, she added, referencing market research that showed the team that there weren’t options for “that luxury shopper who not might not want to buy all her clothes from The Row, Khaite, Toteme, Nili Lotan.”
“Here, you’re getting this amazing leather miniskirt that maybe you’re pairing back to something else, but it can sit within that designer wardrobe. Or it’s that designer-reach for the contemporary customer who really wants something that’s going to last 12 years instead of a season,” O’Connor said.
Future marketing, which O’Connor said the brand is currently navigating, will be a “several-prong approach” building up to the fall collection launch this year, and Club Monaco’s 40th anniversary in September 2025. The revamp approach expands beyond the collections’ rtw and will be pushed through its distinct campaign visuals and in-store messaging, with plans to retrain store associates. In addition, the brand noted that it has reduced its production turnaround by 31 percent (from 14.5 to 10 months), which will help it react to market trends each season.
“We need to prepare and be judicious on how we are preparing, spending money and everything else because we’ve been so quiet for so long,” she said, emphasizing the importance of consistency across messaging.
“We’re doing so much work internally. Our owners are very much aligned and really want us to do this the right way. They’re not looking to unload this company in any way; they’re in it to win it. They’re doing it at the right pace. They’re finance guys — they want to know what makes sense and a lot of my job is to let them know it makes sense. They’ve made a huge investment on bringing me on, then Shawn. We’re fully committed and a package deal, we’re not going anywhere. It’s a great moment to get to redefine things too because — it’s not like we’re trying to do another thing, like what Abercrombie did. We’re going back to what it was — we’re resetting back to the beginning,” O’Connor said.
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