Lord & Taylor Is Going Retro. Will Millennials Be Into It?

This time of year, it’s common to see the racks at apparel stores brimming with clothes in springy floral prints. But set foot into Lord & Taylor this season, and you might notice that they’re going particularly heavy on one flower: The rose. The retailer has ordered up a big roster of rose-emblazoned pieces, many of them exclusives from labels like Karl Lagerfeld Paris and Calvin Klein, that are meant to cater to the contemporary, trend-conscious shopper it is eager to lure into its stores. In addition dresses and blouses, they’ve lined up offbeat items like rose-flavored gummy candies and rose-shaped temporary tattoos. And in some stores, the products will be featured in a shop-in-shop it calls The Birdcage.

It’s a major merchandising and marketing effort that executives hope will serve two purposes: To telegraph a fresh, contemporary direction for the old-school department store without alienating the loyal shoppers who might fondly remember that the rose was a staple of Lord & Taylor marketing from 1946 until it was phased out over the last 20 years. Read more at The Washington Post.