DeMellier Opens First Store on Sloane Square, Backed by £56M Revenue

DeMellier, the London-based luxury handbag brand, reported £56 million in revenue for the financial year ended July and is now opening its first stand-alone store — a 3,230-square-foot, two-floor unit on Sloane Square, in Hugo Boss' former premises, which opens Saturday.

The move marks a structural shift for a business that still generates 80 percent of sales online. The remaining 20 percent flows through wholesale and concession partners including Galeries Lafayette, Neiman Marcus, Net-a-porter, Selfridges and Mytheresa. Founder Mireia Llusia-Lindh confirmed the company is profitable and backed by The Equity Studio, founded by Anna Sweeting.

Why open a flagship now?

The timing is deliberate. DeMellier marks its 10th anniversary next year, and Llusia-Lindh framed the store as the first physical expression of a brand until now sold largely through screens.

"This is the first time our customers can truly step inside our world. The flagship gives us the opportunity to meet them in person, welcome them into our home and show them a much deeper expression of who we are — from our collections and craftsmanship to the values behind the brand," she said in an interview.

She criticized conventional luxury retail as impersonal. "I feel a lot of the retail spaces are quite impersonal — a bit like a museum and very glossy. Instead, I wanted this store to convey our values and to be a place you want to spend time in," she said.

What is inside the store?

Llusia-Lindh appointed residential architect Nicolas Schuybroek to design the space, a choice that signals the store's positioning as a home rather than a shop floor. The ground level resembles a living room, with fabric-covered club chairs, glazed Italian lava stone tables and bags displayed on marble shelves.

The lower floor functions as a dining room, built around a reclaimed-wood table with chairs by French designer Pierre Chapo. The brand plans to host "dinners and conversations" there with brand partners — a channel play that uses the store for relationship-building rather than pure transaction.

A "craft corner" features a bespoke chest of drawers covered in the same leather as the bags. Inside are leather-cutting tools, curved needles and stitching samples. A film plays on a linen-covered wall, showing artisans at DeMellier's factories in Italy and Spain — putting the brand's European supply chain on display at retail.

Schuybroek described the store as "a sequence of inhabited rooms," with handbags displayed "within niches, on shelves and pieces of furniture almost as collected objects, discovered gradually as one moves through the space."

Furniture comes from Axel Einar Hjorth, George Nakashima and Lina Bo Bardi. Paintings are by British artist Susan Gunn.

What does the product mix tell sourcing teams?

DeMellier built its model on cutting out intermediaries. Llusia-Lindh went directly to factories from the start, aiming to hold price points while producing in Europe. The new Sloane bag, an in-store exclusive, is priced at £585 for the large version and £540 for the small, in Italian leather rated gold by the Leather Working Group, the U.K.-based sustainability nonprofit.

The brand's compliance posture is specific:

• Leathers are byproducts of the food chain.
• Unsold pieces are never destroyed.
• Leftover materials are reused or donated to local apprentice schools where possible.
• The A Bag, A Life program donates a portion of every sale to SOS Children's Villages for vaccines and medical treatments for children.

At the store, customers receive a personalized card explaining how their purchase funds the initiative, plus a leather key-chain that can be embossed with initials at the craft corner.

What comes next?

The brand has built visibility through high-profile wearers, including the Princess of Wales with the Mini Hudson and actresses Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Meryl Streep. Design is led by an all-female team.

Llusia-Lindh said London is only the beginning. She plans stand-alone stores in other major cities, alongside further department store concessions, and she will treat the Sloane Square site as a learning experience before committing to further leases.