Barbara Campos is wearing a chic black top and trousers and chunky gold jewellery when we meet — all Joseph, of course — and I can’t help but comment on how deftly she embodies the brand she has helmed since 2018. We’re in the Joseph showroom in southwest London, surrounded by billowing cream curtains and rails of elevated, earthy-toned clothing, accompanied by leather bags, sunglasses, shoes and jewellery. On the table are the lookbook shots for the Spring/Summer 2026 collection, which is being unveiled this week — the first under new creative director Mario Arena.
It all adds up to a compelling vision of the modern Joseph woman, but the glamour of the showroom belies the hard graft that has been going on behind the scenes. Campos — who joined from Marni, where she was global wholesale director, and previously worked at Diane von Furstenberg, Furla and Pringle of Scotland — inherited various challenges: it was loss making, and creative director Louise Trotter had just exited after nine years. Campos took drastic action, restructuring the team, pulling Joseph out of the US market, shutting down its menswear operations, and hiring Anna Lundbäck Dyhr and her husband Frederik as co-creative directors. The changes started to take effect. But then, the pandemic hit.
After a few more years of EBITDA losses, the company reported a profit in 2022, and again in its more recent earnings for 2024. Now, Campos has her eyes set on measured topline growth.
It’s high stakes: Joseph is something of an institution that dates back to 1969, when charismatic, Casablanca-born entrepreneur Joseph Ettedgui opened a hairdressers on King’s Road in London and began selling knitwear by Japanese designer Kenzo via its window. By the early ’70s, Ettedgui had transformed the salon into a multi-brand boutique named Joseph, gradually opening more stores across London. By 1983, he had launched a knitwear label, which grew into an influential ready-to-wear brand, also called Joseph. In 2005, five years before he died, Ettedgui sold the business to its current owner, Japanese clothing manufacturer Onward Kashiyama Co, for £140 million. (The stores no longer stock third-party brands.)
Arena’s appointment in November 2024 marked a new chapter in which the focus is now on telling a clearer story about the brand’s identity and craftsmanship. And with the creative direction in safe hands, Campos is focused on expanding the brand through key distribution channels: Joseph has 20 owned and operated stores and concessions globally, in the UK, France and Japan, and seven franchised concessions in East Asia (one in China, six in Taiwan). It has 275 wholesale stockists globally, including Mytheresa, Net-a-Porter, Neiman Marcus, Harvey Nichols (UK and Dubai), Bloomingdale’s (Dubai) and Lane Crawford (Hong Kong and China). Its fastest-growing markets are the UK and the Middle East.
The brand remains committed to bricks-and-mortar retail. It unveiled a flagship on Regent Street in 2023, with flagships in Tokyo and New York due to follow, the latter marking its re-entry into the US. The plan is also to relaunch menswear in the medium term.
Joseph swung from a £9.7 million EBITDA loss in 2023 to a profit in 2024 (it did not disclose the profit figure). However, following the streamlining, its sales remain lower than they were pre-pandemic — at £45.3 million in 2024, down from £60.6 million in 2018. In the current climate, facing ongoing Brexit red tape, a cloudy outlook for luxury and increasingly stiff competition, it won’t be easy to grow. But, Campos is confident that Joseph’s positioning — in that so-called “accessible” realm, above the high street but below true luxury — sits at a sweet spot, at a time when consumers are questioning the price-value equation.
Here, she outlines the journey so far and what’s next.
Vogue: You took the helm at Joseph amid financial and creative uncertainty. Why did you take on that challenge?
I knew what I was getting into. The brand wasn’t in its best shape, but having grown up in France, Joseph was part of the fashion language for me — I’ve known it a long time and always connected with its values [Joseph always had a strong presence in Paris, opening a design studio in the city in 1993]. Despite changes in creative direction, the brand retained a strong, consistent identity, and I thought that was amazing equity to tap into. I believed that with the right team, a clear vision and a return to Joseph’s DNA, we could give it back the voice it deserved. So I wasn’t intimidated by the challenge. What I didn’t expect was a global pandemic.
Vogue: What helped you to ride out the pandemic?
We didn’t make any knee-jerk decisions. If we decided to change something, we paused first. We reduced the size of our collections drastically and pivoted to what people were looking for; something a little more comfortable, which we always did anyway. Knitwear is very much one of our strengths. We were bringing that to life in a way that felt comfortable but also elevated.
Vogue: What were the priorities in the turnaround?
A complete reset of the brand was the main priority, particularly around the product. Driving operational efficiency has also been a key contributor to the turnaround. We really had to streamline all of our processes to improve our cost structure and margins. The most difficult part was around restructuring the teams, but it was an essential part of the turnaround to bring a set of new skills and a new energy into the business.
Vogue: What stage is Joseph at now? Have you come through the reset phase?
We’ve made a lot of progress and we are now in a phase of growth — but not growth for growth’s sake. We want to continue to build a strong, solid brand that is modern, that is relevant for today but also for tomorrow. The arrival of Mario within the business is going to be great for our next chapter where we continue to elevate the brand, where we continue to innovate but stay very tied to our DNA.
There’s still a lot of things that we want to do. Our digital capabilities, particularly around omnichannel, are not where we want them to be. And we continue to invest in the look and feel of our stores. If you look at Regent Street [which opened in October 2023], we really wanted to bring an element of craftsmanship into the store design. It is calm and inviting. When you step into it from the busy street, it welcomes and envelopes you. We want all of our stores to feel like this.
Vogue: Why the ongoing commitment to bricks-and-mortar?
Bricks-and-mortar retail represents 60 per cent of our business. It’s true that the digital world has taken a bigger space, but it hasn’t made retail disappear — it has made it evolve. We think the human connection that people are looking for in a store is becoming more and more apparent and important. This is not going to disappear with the newer generation. That human connection feels like a luxury. And for brands like ours, with that craftsmanship and those textures, having a store that invites you into our world to experience that, to touch those fabrics, to try the feel and the fit, it is more important than ever.
Vogue: There’s so much more emphasis now on craftsmanship, but not every brand has the heritage and the history to do it meaningfully. It will be interesting to watch how that evolves.
Craft has always been part of the DNA of Joseph. If you look back to when [Ettedgui] created the brand, it was always about the simplicity of the garment. It empowers you as a person without overpowering you. It’s an intelligent design, something that’s understated but that the eye can recognise that element of craftsmanship. Mario has brought that to life beautifully in his first collection.
Vogue: Why was now the right time to bring in a new creative director?
Bringing everyone under one roof here in the UK was essential at a time where we needed to be more responsive than ever. [The previous co-creative directors were based in Paris.] It makes collaboration and communication so much easier. And Mario was a natural fit. He has such passion for what he does and for the development of the product. I fell in love with this vision of building from the past in a modern way. We felt very aligned on our values, on the vision. And while he’s been active in the British fashion scene for some time, he also brings an international mindset — he knows the consumer from Asia, from the US, from Europe. That’s very valuable.
Mario Arena’s appointment comes as the London brand gathers momentum.
Vogue: Where do you see the most potential for Joseph internationally?
First of all, we’re still exploring opportunities in the UK — I think there’s still room to grow here. Outside of the UK, Asia is an area we’ve been looking into developing for some time. We are taking a tactical approach, starting in Japan first because we already have an awareness there. And in Europe, there is still a lot of potential. The brand resonates well in France, in Germany and in Scandinavia. In the coming years, flagships in Paris and Tokyo are definitely on the cards.
We would like to go back to New York at some point, when it feels right. That was part of our plan last year [it has been put on hold amid the tariff uncertainty]. We’ll have to see what happens.
Vogue: The US can be such a complex market to penetrate for international brands.
And it’s far away. If you want to control your environment, you need to be there. We did not have the resources and the capability to align it with what we wanted to do in the UK. So we decided to disappear for a moment. Going back would make a lot of sense for us.
Vogue: What about wholesale? Where does that fit into the mix?
Wholesale is still an important part of our development as well, to help build awareness. A lot is being thrown at the online players because they’re playing internationally. We lost Russia in 2022, which was a big market for everyone. The US is going to become more challenging, though we don’t exactly know to what extent. It’s hard for [online retailers] to navigate with accuracy and plan the future when there’s so much instability. I see our role as continuing to support our partners; working with them, meeting them, discussing, listening, finding solutions together to continue to grow their business and our business.
Premium outlets are another part of the strategy we’re developing. We feel it’s a great way to broaden our customer, our customer base, our awareness, but also a great way to manage our discount policy and the visibility of that discount, and to protect the brand.
Vogue: Have you found that Joseph’s accessible luxury price point is becoming more of an advantage now?
The luxury consumer seems to be more price-conscious lately, and we definitely feel that the pocket we are in — which has always been just outside of the crowded middle, but just under the luxury segment — is something very interesting for the consumer. But I think it goes beyond just the price point. You have to build the value equation in the product. I think we’re perfectly positioned to grasp this moment and the opportunity in the market.
We will remain where we are in terms of position and price. This is critical for us. But we have stretched our prices a little further to test the appetite. We also have a wider entry base than we did previously. We’re stretching both ways, not just up but also a little down. Consumers are much more savvy and very conscious of how they spend their money.
Vogue: What’s the vision for the next few years?
We want to continue to elevate the brand and in a way that resonates with the consumer, through the distribution and through the product obviously, and the service we’re giving to our clients.
Vogue: What about menswear?
Stopping menswear [in 2019] was one of the tougher decisions we had to take to focus on the core of the brand and the business. We’re seriously thinking about [rebooting menswear]. It’s not a matter of if — it’s more a matter of when we’d be ready to do that. It feels like a natural extension. It was there before, sitting beautifully next to our womenswear with the same aesthetic, the same values. It resonates also because of the brand’s duality in the DNA between masculine and feminine in design. The way we see Joseph evolving is as a strong, modern brand for women and men. A British icon.
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