Item 2023.37.9 - Next Double-Breasted Tailored Coat

British retailer Next was founded by the Leeds-based menswear company Hepworths (1864–1986). Responding to changes in UK clothing retailing in the early 1980s, the Hepworths Group purchased Kendall & Sons, a family-owned womenswear business, in 1981. The following year they recruited retail entrepreneur George Davies (b. 1941), alongside designers Conran Associates (design director John Stephenson came up with the name ‘Next’) to lead the project to transform Kendall & Sons into a new women’s fashion chain. The label was aimed at fashion-conscious women aged between twenty- four and forty-four; by May 1982, eighty stores had been completely redesigned, fitted out and stocked as Next. The label was hugely successful and in 1983 Davies was given the responsibility of the 350 Hepworths menswear stores, quickly deciding to replace them with a menswear version of Next. Next for Men launched in August 1984, the last Hepworths store closed in 1985, and the parent company of J. Hepworth & Son changed its name to Next plc in 1986. Next launched their mail-order business Next Directory in 1988 and in 2015 opened their 546th store.
Sources: Hepworth Mercury; George Davies, What Next? (London: Century, 1989); nextplc.co.uk.