Hardy Amies and Miss Sixty enter administration

The doom and gloom continues in the retail sector after it has been announced that Hardy Amies, the Savile Row tailor and former dressmaker to the Queen, confirmed it is to call in the administrators after a rescue finance package failed.

The company operates from just six stores in the UK, which includes its flagship store at Savile Row, which was established in 1946.

Hardy Amies also designed the costumes for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Its clothes are stocked in many stores throughout the country, including Harvey Nichols.

The firm said that it had been approached by various parties since its shares were suspended last Friday, but has so far been unable to finalise an offer that would secure the future of the business.

The company added that it has taken the decision to file a notice of intention to appoint an administrator.

Many critics say that the company has become ‘distinctly mumsy‘ and it had failed to understand its customers.

The company has experienced a series of losses and in June, the group’s chairman, Andrew Manders, said the womenswear stores performed poorly which was largely self-inflicted, due primarily to poor products.

Meanwhile, Sixty UK, the company that runs both the Miss Sixty and Energie fashion labels, has put its retail stores into administration.

Vantis Business Recovery Services has been appointed to oversee a corporate restructuring.

Miss Sixty has 12 outlets in the UK as well as concessions in major department stores.

Today’s news is the latest in a series of bad news for the retail sector as consumers cut back on their spending.

Clothing and homeware chain Joy, and furnishings and curtain chain, Rosebys, have both been placed into administration.

Earlier this week, furniture giant MFI was rescued from the brink of collapse by a management buyout.

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