From thier email

“It will close this Saturday night 20th Nov for a refit, re-opening the following Saturday 27th Nov, with howies taking a smaller section at the back of the store and Timberland occupyingthe front bit.”

I wonder how long it will even be in the back section? I am not a big fan, but its a bit of a shame they are getting sidelined.

I imagine this is more to do with it’s viability. I work over the road and it’s not the busiest of shops.

Would be sad to see it go as I like the evening stuff they put in the studio upstairs from time to time.

I have seen Timberland boots in the Covent Garden store too….

No great suprise – they are the same companyu now really – Howies are just a little branch of.

As long as they keep making jeans that just fit me right and last a while I’ll remain a customer.

t-shirts come form new sources now though.

I popped in there on Saturday to get a copy of The Ride. They reckoned they had a pair of jeans that would be long enough to fit me.

£160 a pair.

I didn’t bother.

That £160 is about what you’d pay for Japanese woven selvedge denim. Heck, I’ve been in shops up Park Street with a friend looking for jeans to fit her and there were dozens of pairs of anonymous looking jeans with a bit of fancy embroidery and a couple of rips going for upwards of £170 a pair, so don’t express shock at the cost of the Howies selvedge jeans.

I am wondering if Howies as a brand will bite the dust before long. Otherwise, you would put Timberland in the back or a shared frontage. I saw somewhere that both the original founders had now left Howies, so I guess there is no one to fight for its preservation with Timberland other than as just a name on a range tag, like Marks and Spencers ran mini brands which they are now phasing out.

I am not surprised Bristol branch is being reviewed as sales space. The shop in Bristol seemed to devote more space to ‘image’ than it did to actual stock. To me a sign they were selling at a silly high price, to be able to waste so much space on non selling image based objects. It was more like walking around a pretentious art gallery, with lots of ‘stand back and admire’ space. I dont think I have ever seen a shop (even expensive ones) waste quite so much sales footage.

Well at least it won’t be full of stuck up clifton w@nkers now.

so don’t express shock at the cost of the Howies selvedge jeans.

Why not? If I wanted to go into the frankly awful shops on Park St and look for £170 jeans, I’d do it. I don’t. I never will. I’m commenting on the fact that a shop that mainly sells jeans and t-shirts only had one item they thought would fit me and they were a mental £160 a pair. I could care less what the cotton fabric is for a pair of made in China jeans.