Inside Agent Provocateur’s North London studio, before creative director Sarah Shotton and CEO Ben Banks arrive, I make my way through the rails of lingerie. There’s a rainbow of bustiers, corsets, suspenders and stockings, covered in sequins, lace and leather. Some styles are reserved for the brave, with pretty severe, plentiful elastic across the body like a trellis. Some are more demure, albeit in shades of red or teal. To me, it all feels classic Agent Provocateur, the disruptive luxury lingerie label that burst onto the underwear market in the ’90s and added some sex appeal and costume to affluent women’s lingerie drawers around the globe.
But according to Shotton, if I’d visited the brand’s HQ a few years ago, under its previous ownership, the rails would have looked very different. “There was a time when it was dumbed down,” she says, sitting on a sofa across from me in the middle of the studio. “A few years ago [under previous leadership], I was doing more [basic] collections. Buyers would buy deeply into something [basic] and I would think, ‘You’re not going to sell that.’”
