It looks like the opening of the Macquarie Centre, with Sydney’s first H&M and a cluster of other fashion destinations, is shifting Sydney’s fashion epicentre away from the CBD.
And the thought appears to have made the denizens of Pitt St Mall, the city’s most high-footfall shopping destination, do a bit of self-evaluation.
Now, with the help of the Lord Mayor, they’ve announced a series of programmes designed to make Pitt St Mall a reinvigorated part of the Sydney retail scene, from innovative retail spaces to events.
The Mall will now become a multi-purpose environment, hosting music sets, performances, films and other events – one a month for the next year.
Lord Mayor Clover Moore told the press that “Pitt Street Mall is Australia’s premier retail destination, and we want to ensure it
retains this status by helping local retailers attract more residents, workers and visitors.”
The big merit of the Pitt St Mall Sydney? Its placement. More than 65,000 people walk through it every day, which means that it gets a lot of incidental traffic (what normal people call ‘oh, I’ll just pop in and pick up a T-shirt’ shopping, as opposed to driving or travelling to a shopping destination specifically to purchase something or browse.)
A lot of work goes into picking up pedestrians in fashion. Those huge Christmas window displays on 5th Avenue in New York? They’re lovely, and great publicity, but they’re also designed to lure you inside to check out the merchandise.
It’s particularly important these days, where shopping in a physical store has to be an impressive, immersive experience to distinguish it from flicking through images on an e-boutique. Shopping online is streamlining (Twitter now has a ‘Buy Now’ button that sends you straight to some e-stores), but real-world malls and stores are becoming more complex, with bells and whistles, special experiences and personalised service.
But will Pitt St Mall’s efforts be enough to lure shoppers away from the North Shore and their computers? It has a huge slice of the CBD’s fashion business – over a third of the yearly profits, in fact – but it’ll need to make sure its revitalised spaces draw return business, rather than a collection of one-time-only gawkers.
One thing’s for sure: we love the idea of a more expansive shopping experience. Might we suggest some lush film screenings with massive fashion pedigrees, like Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette or one of the recent biopics of Yves Saint Laurent?
That will definitely inspire some credit card flashing. Get on it, Sydney retailers.
Image: Pitt St Mall.