Hannah Alley

Hannah AlleySep 17, 2026

Recently I passed six months of being freelance, running Hannah Alley Consulting and somehow managed to miss the date completely because I was, well, working. 😊 I don’t think I’ve stopped for very long to look at what has happened and when I finally did, the past six months looked slightly mad. I started my consulting knowing the kind of work I wanted to do and the industries I wanted to stay close to, although I had no idea how quickly some of it would happen. I’ve worked with founder-led fashion and jewellery businesses on launches and partnerships from the very beginning, shaping go-to-market plans, positioning and the commercial thinking around how a new brand enters the world. I’ve worked with independent businesses serving HNW and UHNW clients and with founders who have trusted me with businesses they have spent years building. Then there have been the enquiries I probably would have put on a “someday” list six months ago. I’ve been approached by global retailers about partnership work and by established designer ready-to-wear fashion houses, including conversations connected to London Fashion Week that I absolutely did not expect to be having in my first year working independently. I’ve worked on brand partnerships around London Fashion Week for British designers, alongside beauty awards and other fashion projects spanning London and Paris Fashion Week. A slightly surreal sentence to type from the same desk where, earlier in the year, I was trying to work out what my first six months of self-employment might look like. The editorial side has grown as well. WWD and The Independent have approached me for expert commentary on luxury, fashion and retail and WatchPro invited me to write for them, which has now turned into two original bylined articles published across its UK and US editions. There have been proposals that went nowhere, weeks where I have had to create the opportunity rather than wait for it to appear and a lot of learning how different it feels to be responsible for the business as well as the work. I’m quite proud of it, which I’m saying here because I’m usually onto the next thing before I’ve properly registered what just happened! More than anything, the past six months have made me much more certain about the work I want Hannah Alley Consulting to be known for: senior marketing and brand strategy, launch and growth work, and brand partnerships for ambitious fashion, luxury, jewellery, beauty, retail and premium businesses. I’m opening a small amount of new client capacity for autumn/winter 2026. I’m excited to see what the next six months look like. Although perhaps this time I’ll remember the anniversary. #luxurymarketing #brandpartnerships #fashionbusiness #freelance

Hannah AlleySep 17, 2026

If a luxury brand spends £100,000 on an experience, I’m much less interested in how impressive the room looked than in what the guests did afterwards. Did somebody return sooner? Buy into another category? Introduce another collector? Give the retailer a greater share of their annual spend? That became the starting point for my latest article, which I was invited to write for WatchPro and which is now live across both WatchPro UK and WatchPro USA. I loved writing this one because luxury watch experiences have become extraordinary. OMEGA SA built a Pavilion around Milano Cortina 2026, took over Carlo Cracco’s restaurant for Omega House and transformed the Tanks at Tate Modern for Planet Ocean. Panerai now has an experience available to buyers of just 30 Radiomir sets. Watches of Switzerland hosted more than 500 client events across the UK and US in FY25. There is plenty of creativity in the category and so I wanted to look at the economics sitting behind it. Take a sought-after watch allocated after a client dinner. Calling the whole sale event-generated revenue can absolutely flatter the result if another customer would have bought the watch the following day. I’m much more intrigued by what changed about that client relationship afterwards. And the time horizon is interesting too. Thierry Stern has said Patek Philippe sees an uplift for two years after its Grand Exhibitions, while Watch Week Aspen told Forbes that high-value purchases originating from relationships made at an event can arrive months later. This makes measuring luxury experience messier than putting footfall, impressions and sales into a post-event deck. For me, the idea is the commercial afterlife: what the customer did, what the business learnt about them and whether their economics with the brand changed afterwards. Thank you to WatchPro for inviting me to explore it properly. Seeing the piece published for both its UK and US audiences is lovely. I’ve included my full article in the first comment. #luxurywatches #luxuryretail #luxurymarketing

Hannah AlleySep 18, 2026

M&S is making its London Fashion Week debut today and every look will be available to buy the same day. Which sounds very 2026, except fashion tried almost exactly this ten years ago. In 2016, Burberry turned its LFW show into a see now, buy now event, while M&S was experimenting with immediate purchase at its own press showcase. Burberry had stepped back from the model by 2018. For a while, the idea seemed to belong to that particular moment when everyone was trying to work out what Instagram had done to the six-month gap between seeing a collection and being able to own it. So I find it quite interesting that M&S is bringing the idea back now. Another one for the series I’ve started on the business behind fashion and luxury, because this week’s LFW schedule is giving the runway a lot more to do than present next season’s pieces. M&S is showing a collection from Collection, Per Una and Autograph that customers can buy as of today. eBay’s Endless Runway is on the schedule as of yesterday, with pre-loved looks sold in real time through eBay Live. Selfridges has a curated edit of LFW designers in store, while Dover Street Market is hosting the BFC Jewellery Showcase. The BFC has been unusually direct about the commercial part of this. Its 2030 strategy says LFW should drive commercial value and widen consumer access. It has even removed the old minimum wholesale-stockist requirement for designers applying to the schedule. I read M&S being there differently when I put that beside what the retailer has spent this year doing: monthly trend-led drops, the Aries collaboration and revival of St Michael, shows in Ibiza and at Silverstone, plus the new Pantheon flagship on Oxford Street, which it is using as a test site for Fashion, Home and Beauty. Put all of that together and M&S at LFW starts to make a lot more sense. It can use the week to put itself in the same fashion conversation as the designers people come to London to see, then send the customer straight to clothes she can buy while she is still interested in them. Having a British retailer of that scale on the schedule also brings in a customer who may never have cared about the industry calendar before. Ten years ago, the question was whether the runway could become shoppable. In 2026, I think more of the challenge is what a Fashion Week is supposed to do for a fashion business once the lights come back on. I suspect this week will tell us quite a lot. #londonfashionweek #LFW #fashionbusiness #britishfashion