V&A’s Lauren Sizeland on the museum’s growth in China, Japan and Korea, V&A Beauty concessions and further expansion in fashion.
The heritage sector – from museums and galleries, through to universities, gardens and stately homes – continues to gain momentum when it comes to licensing, with 2022 having seen some high profile product launches and collaborations.
LicensingSource.net catches up with some of the companies operating in the sector.
Today: Lauren Sizeland, head of licensing and business development, V&A.
“This year has seen the continued momentum of growing our brand licensing business. We have activated key strategic developments with some of our long-standing licensing and retail partners in China, Japan and Korea. We are cementing some very interesting new relationships in the UK and Europe, which should provide us with some terrific opportunities for embedding the V&A’s core mission for promoting excellence in design, manufacturing and craftsmanship.
2022 began with the ground-breaking launch of the first V&A and Chow Sang Sang Jewellery stores in K11 Musea, Hong Kong and The Londoner, Macau. Following on from the launch in 2021 of our V&A Beauty brand of skincare and cosmetics with Korean licensee Healer.B, we have added a men’s skincare range and opened two new V&A Beauty concessions in department stores in Seoul, South Korea and Osaka, Japan. Additionally, a two-week pop-up V&A Beauty store opened at ‘Hyundai Seoul’ in March and another in Lotte Myeongdong, Seoul in June. Three further stores are planned to open in Seoul; two permanent, plus a pop-up for December.
We are underway with some exciting projects with new licensees, whose design and craft credentials are allowing us to explore culturally diverse traditional manufacturing techniques (and digital printing methods) particularly in textiles and wall coverings. Also coming up, Love & Roses womenswear label (owned by Next) is launching its new V&A autumn/winter collection, with the patterns and artworks reflecting the V&A’s collection of century-spanning floral textiles and natural history prints.
The V&A is probably best known for its incredible exhibitions on fashion themes. It is also guardian of the UK’s national collection of jewellery, holding over 16,000 glittering and exquisite pieces. Despite these plaudits and decades of searching, believe it or not, we do not have a jewellery licensee with UK distribution. It would be a wonderful achievement to identify and appoint a licensee which specialises either in costume or fine jewellery. The doors are open in South Kensington…”
This feature originally appeared in the autumn 2022 edition of Licensing Source Book. To read the full publication, click on this link.
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