Liberty opens a second jewellery hall as fashion jewellery sales climb 20%

Liberty has opened a second jewellery hall, the Fashion Jewellery Gallery, specialising in demi-fine and fashion-led designs rather than the precious metal pieces sold elsewhere in the store. The department store said the move responds directly to customer demand for value, self-expression and adornment. Jewellery sales across the business are up 20 percent year on year, against a single quarter of fabric floor expansion.

The new space is on Liberty's first floor, adjacent to its designer and advanced contemporary womenswear rooms, and houses 37 brands, 11 of them exclusive to the store. Ten shops-in-shop line its perimeter, alongside glass display cases and a living room area set aside for launches, events and private consultations.

The gallery is designed to complement Liberty's existing fine jewellery hall on the ground floor, which specialises in 14 and 18 karat gold pieces and had been running out of space as new brands arrived. That hall, too, expanded in response to customer demand, the retailer said.

Why Liberty built a second hall

Ruby Beales, Liberty's jewellery buying manager, said her team sought out new brands, or ones not previously stocked in the UK, to add excitement to the space. She said the team thought hard about the customer journey, brand adjacencies and pricing when laying out the gallery.

Beales called jewellery one of the most personal categories Liberty buys, adding that customers increasingly want pieces reflecting individual style rather than following trends. She said the Fashion Jewellery Gallery was created in response to that shift, and is meant to help shoppers discover pieces they were not looking for.

Statement jewellery brands including Kenneth Jay Lane, Julietta and Vivienne Westwood have been positioned near the passage leading into the fashion floor, a deliberate placement meant to draw shoppers moving between the two categories. The gallery is next to designer womenswear and advanced contemporary collections on the first floor because the store wants fashion and jewellery to complement each other, she said.

The exclusives Liberty has signed

Wouters & Hendrix, a 42 year old Antwerp brand known for organic, surreal and often humorous designs, is opening its first store outside Benelux inside the gallery. Its Liberty shop-in-shop stocks necklaces adorned with copper-plated mussel shells, chessboard rings inspired by Marcel Duchamp's passion for the game, and brooches shaped like Salvador Dali's Mae West lips.

French brand Gas Bijoux has chosen Liberty for its first shop outside France, selling colourful, textured, bohemian-flecked designs. Missoma, a longtime Liberty stockist, has installed a welding machine in its shop-in-shop so customers can join bracelets on site, while Daisy London is creating personalised jewellery boxes for shoppers.

Liberty has placed in-house jewellery specialists across the gallery to offer what it describes as expert, unbiased advice spanning the different brands, including guidance on gifting and on building a collection over time. The retailer is also stocking fabric dust bags, matching cleaning cloths, handwoven envelopes and note cards as part of the service.

A wider reshaping of Liberty's floors

The jewellery expansion follows a summer overhaul of Liberty's fabric floor, which grew by 140 percent after taking over space formerly given to tableware, crockery and small home furnishings. Lydia King, Liberty's retail managing director, told trade press in July that the strategy is to focus on what the store does well.

King said fabrics are integral to the Liberty brand and part of its history, and that the retailer wanted to celebrate the category, elevate the customer experience and show the breadth of its range. The jewellery gallery applies the same logic to a category the store says is growing far faster than the store average.

Together the two moves point to a retailer reallocating floor space toward categories where demand is rising fastest, rather than holding fixed departments in place regardless of sales trends.

The gallery's location beside designer and advanced contemporary womenswear is itself a strategic choice, positioning fashion jewellery as an impulse or complementary purchase for shoppers already browsing clothing rather than as a destination category requiring its own separate trip through the store.

Liberty has not disclosed the cost of building the new gallery, how much floor space it has in square footage, or what portion of total store revenue jewellery now represents. Those figures would clarify how large a bet this is relative to the rest of the business.

The retailer has not said whether further category expansions are planned beyond fabrics and jewellery, or whether other departments will be reduced to make room for future growth categories as customer habits continue shifting toward personalisation, layering and mixed-metal styling across price points.

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Image: Liberty