Est. Harrods · Selfridges · Harvey Nichols
Creating places people want to visit, brands want to be part of, and customers remember.
Commercial strategy · Concept creation · Customer experience · CEO & board advisory
I work at CEO and board level, originating retail concepts, building brand portfolios and creating the environments that define what a retailer can become. From Oxford Street to Knightsbridge, from Riyadh to Helsinki: the ideas that shape what comes next start here.
Selected Work
I started on the shop floor at twenty and trained through every discipline of the house, from retail to buying to management. It was there I discovered I had an eye, and that what I loved most was making people feel extraordinary in what they wore. I brought the first live DJs onto the shop floor, with names known the world over playing every Saturday. The store that had always whispered learned to play music.
As part of the menswear master plan for Oxford Street, I delivered the central designer space, the anchor of the floor and its point of view. Architecture, adjacencies and edit working as one, so a man moving through the floor was carried from brand to brand without ever feeling sold to. Earlier came Men's Spirit, where I brought the first skate concept into a department store, with a ramp built in the car park for the launch.
Part of the womenswear master plan for the second and third floors, created with architect Jamie Fobert. We introduced Chanel, Prada and Céline to the store, then juxtaposed them with the most creative names of the moment: Sacai, Comme des Garçons, Rick Owens. A floor that held both establishment and edge, designed around the customer's experience down to the fitting rooms.
We created boutique spaces for each brand, making the intimacy of Harvey Nichols its point of difference against the giants. Every look edited head to toe, to perfection. The ultimate service floor, where the edit did the talking.
One immersive floor with everything, where each space spoke to the senses through its own material palette, music and scent, and product created for a man's every want. At the heart of it, the 109 bar, where we launched concepts, hosted events and were at our most creative.
Birmingham became our laboratory for the ultimate customer experience. Clients were greeted from the moment they left the car park, personal shopping suites hosted whole afternoons of gaming, unwinding and bespoke edits from favourite brands, and a spa sat above it all.
We shaped the concept room by room, bringing the best brands in the world, focused entirely on the Riyadh woman. We bought three seasons and trained the team to carry the buying forward, introducing exclusives found nowhere else in the Kingdom, down to bespoke sneakers from the Shoe Surgeon.
The first retail concept in the desert, a winter season pop up beside Elephant Rock, set among the luxury resorts of AlUla. Proof that the right edit, in the right place, needs no walls at all.
A new luxury hall for the great department store of the Nordics: concept, brand portfolio and customer experience, from first sketch to opening. Live now, opening 2026.
About Anita
Anita Barr has spent more than thirty years creating retail concepts for some of the world's leading department stores and cultural destinations. She began on the shop floor at Harrods and became its youngest buyer within five years, going on to serve as Director of Womenswear and Childrenswear at Selfridges and Global Fashion Buying Director at Harvey Nichols. Her cultural and museum retail work includes Ithra, the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Saudi Arabia. Her career has been profiled by Vogue.
Today she advises CEOs, founders and executive teams on creating commercially successful retail destinations, bringing together strategy, concept creation, merchandising, customer experience and operational delivery across Europe and the Middle East.
Contact
If you're rethinking a department store, a cultural destination or a luxury retail experience, I'd be delighted to talk.
anita@anitabarrconsulting.com