When I walked into the new Superdry at the Beverly Center, I felt like I’d been in one before, or in a store just like it. It was as if I’d walked into an Abercrombie & Fitch, but they’d turned on the rest of the lights and replaced all the aspiring supermodels with average people.
I’m not just talking about the look of the store, either. For a British store, the clothes are very all-American, which reflects their American vintage influence. There is a lot of plaid, a lot of Western-feeling “Superdry” logo shirts, some casual dresses and a lot of new clothes that look old. According to its website it sells blouses, but I may very well have been so underwhelmed by them in person that I didn’t notice them. The less-obvious Japanese design influence is apparent in the simple cut and style of the windbreakers and the occasional sprinkle of Japanese terms and symbols on the designs.
If you’re an Anglophile looking for something with a foreign edge to it, you’d be better off with an American store trying to emulate British style than the British take on American fashion, which is what you get at Superdry. That’s not to say Superdry fails at capturing casual American clothes, just that I don’t see why it would want to.
Jeans, jackets and boots are Superdry’s strong points. On its website it offers a lot of “loose” pants that either unflatteringly double the size of the model’s leg or look like they’re about to fall off, but in the store it focuses on its skinny jeans, which are worn and faded with interesting seams running down the middle of the leg and around the knees.
The windbreakers are well-made, and the leather jackets and other coats would be a welcome addition to any closet, if you don’t mind the loss from your checking account. That’s the problem with most of the clothes in Superdry – they’re nice enough, but not for the price tag.
For those of us on a budget (the sort of people who probably wouldn’t be shopping at the Beverly Center in the first place), only the boots are nice enough to warrant their price tag. The Lumphammer boots are the sort you would expect to find sitting on the back porch of a rugged yet stylish mountain man, the sort who buys one pair of reliable boots and wears them for the rest of his life. They’re a rich brown that looks like they’ve been faded by the sun and scuffed up by the rocks and branches on hiking trails. The only difference is that they’re new and probably cost more than what a mountain man might pay at the nearest general store. The men’s boots are probably the best things in the store, where everything else is available at American Eagle Outfitters or Gap for a fraction of the price.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand that price is reciprocal to quality and that a $700 dress from Marc Jacobs is going to be of a higher quality than the $10 dress I got from Forever 21 on Black Friday. But most high-end stores (Topshop, Madewell, etc.) don’t sell clothes you can get at other stores. The items Superdry has that distinguish it from its cheaper rivals, like its boots or even its jeans, are worth buying. I would buy the $350 Lumphammer boots if I could afford them, but even if I had money to burn, I don’t think I would ever buy a completely and totally ordinary American vintage flannel shirt for $90.
E-mail John at ajohn@media.ucla.edu.