Roland Mouret’s later business endured a far more conventional but devastating fashion-industry downfall. The company had already been restructuring after closing its Manhattan flagship in 2018 and streamlining operations, but the COVID-19 crisis exposed how financially fragile the label had become. Sales fell by 80 percent during the first half of 2020, prompting Mouret and co-owner Simon Fuller’s XIX Entertainment to seek emergency outside investment. Mouret told the Financial Times, “I am going to be the last man standing,” but the rescue effort did not prevent insolvency. In June 2021, the business sold a minority stake to its landlord, Grosvenor Group; by November, it had entered administration, Grant Thornton was appointed to oversee the process, the London flagship closed, and 84 jobs were lost. Shortly afterward, designer and entrepreneur Han Chong acquired the Roland Mouret brand’s intellectual property and assets through the newly formed SP Collection, turning the label’s collapse into an ownership transfer rather than a clean continuation of Mouret’s independent company.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 2020s
From Pandemic Sales Collapse to Administration: The 2021 Failure of Roland Mouret’s Fashion Company
Roland Mouret / XIX Entertainment / 2020s
Roland Mouret’s later business endured a far more conventional but devastating fashion-industry downfall. The company had already been restructuring after closing its Manhattan flagship in 2018 and streamlining operations, but the COVID-19 crisis exposed how financially fragile the label had become. Sales fell by 80 percent during the first half of 2020, prompting Mouret and co-owner Simon Fuller’s XIX Entertainment to seek emergency outside investment. Mouret told the Financial Times, “I am going to be the last man standing,” but the rescue effort did not prevent insolvency. In June 2021, the business sold a minority stake to its landlord, Grosvenor Group; by November, it had entered administration, Grant Thornton was appointed to oversee the process, the London flagship closed, and 84 jobs were lost. Shortly afterward, designer and entrepreneur Han Chong acquired the Roland Mouret brand’s intellectual property and assets through the newly formed SP Collection, turning the label’s collapse into an ownership transfer rather than a clean continuation of Mouret’s independent company.
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