Merchandising isn't here to kill the creative vision - it's here to give it a backbone

There's a version of merchandising that creative directors dread. The one that arrives with a spreadsheet and a list of reasons why the beautiful thing won't work. Too expensive. Too niche. Too risky. Not enough volume potential. This version of merchandising is real - I've seen it - and it does kill creative vision. But it also misunderstands what the job actually is.

The best merchandising doesn't constrain creativity. It gives it something to stand on.

Two starting points, one collection

At Nanushka I’m working alongside Creative Director Sandra Sandor, and I understood this more clearly than I ever had before. Sandra's starting point for a new season is fabric. She begins with research - textures, references, cultural moments, materials that evoke a particular feeling. The collection grows outward from there, finding its silhouettes, its colour language, its mood.

My starting point is functionality and price points. SKU counts by category. Fabric mix targets. The ratio of newness to carry-over. The commercial shape of the season before a single sketch has been drawn.

On the surface, these look like opposite processes. In practice, they run in parallel - and the magic happens when they meet.

A new season starts simultaneously at her desk with creative research, and at ours with the collection brief. By the end of the process, the two have become one.

What I learnt from working with Sandra and her team is that truly great creative directors aren't afraid of the commercial conversation - they're hungry for it, provided it comes from a place of genuine understanding rather than blunt constraint. The Nanushka creative team could listen to merchandising because they trusted that merchandising was listening to them. That trust has to be earned, and it's earned by showing up at the right moments with the right questions rather than the wrong answers.

When merchandising enters the room

One of the most important - and least discussed - aspects of how merchandising and creative work together is timing. Merchandising needs to be present at sketch reviews, early in the process, before decisions have hardened into commitments. Not to veto, but to form opinions alongside the creative team: what is this season's hero? What fills the commercial core? What exists for editorial impact rather than volume - and does the range have enough of both?

At this stage, the merchandiser's role isn't to approve or reject. It's to ask the questions that shape the range before it becomes expensive to reshape it. Is this category weighted correctly for the season? Do we have a clear entry price that will bring new customers in? Is there enough continuity to protect the business, and enough newness to give the customer a reason to come back?

A good merchandiser at a sketch review is not the person crossing things out. They're the person helping the creative director see which ideas deserve the most investment - and building the commercial case for the ones that do.

The editorial piece has a role too

This is something that purely commercially-minded merchandisers sometimes miss: not every piece in a collection needs to be a volume driver. Some pieces exist to make the rest of the range feel possible. They set the tone, attract press, define the brand's ambition for the season, and give the customer something to aspire to even if they buy something more accessible.

A good merchandiser doesn't just tolerate editorial pieces - they understand why they're necessary and advocate for them when the financial pressure is on. The mistake isn't including a beautifully crafted, deliberately impractical piece in the range. The mistake is including too many of them, or not being honest about which ones they are, so the buy ends up over-weighted towards product that was never going to sell at volume.

The skill is in the balance: knowing which pieces are commercial workhorses, which are brand-builders, and which are pure editorial statements - and making sure the collection has enough of each in the right proportions.

What creative directors actually need from merchandising

Working closely with a creative director like Sandra - whose inspiration can genuinely come from anywhere, from a piece of fabric to an architectural detail to a conversation she had in a different country - taught me something important about what the creative process needs from its commercial partner.

It doesn't need a gatekeeper. It needs a translator.

Someone who can take a creative instinct and find its commercial expression. Who can look at a fabric choice and understand both why it's beautiful and what it will cost, what margin it will support, and which customer it will speak to. Who can see the whole collection as Sandra sees it - as a world, a feeling, a point of view - and also see it as a range that has to perform across channels, markets, and price points.

This is why I keep a moodboard. Not as a professional exercise, but because genuinely loving fashion - being moved by a collection, curious about a creative director's references, interested in the cultural context a garment comes from - makes you better at the commercial side of this job. You can't translate between two languages if you only speak one of them.

The collection is a conversation

The most commercially successful collections I've been part of weren't the ones where merchandising had the most control. They were the ones where the conversation between creative and commercial was the most honest - where both sides understood what they were trying to achieve, trusted each other's expertise, and were willing to be challenged.

A creative director who understands why the price architecture matters will make better creative decisions. A merchandiser who understands why a particular fabric choice is non-negotiable will find smarter ways to make it work commercially. When that mutual understanding is in place, the collection stops being a negotiation and becomes something better - a shared creative and commercial ambition that neither side could have arrived at alone.

Merchandising at its best doesn't ask "will this sell?" It asks "how do we make this work?" - and then it builds the commercial architecture that makes the answer yes.