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📈   Bicester Village at 30: how a wet field in Oxfordshire defied the death of the shopping mall

Business

With almost 100% occupancy and a waiting list for pop-up spaces, the Disneyland-inspired fashion mecca is bucking trendsBefore a shopping centre selling past-season designer fashion at discounted prices opened its doors in April 1995, the site of Bicester Village had been “a wet field containing two old horses that looked ready for the knacker’s yard, and a fallen-down shed behind a small branch of Tesco”, remembers Colin Woodhead, a PR director who worked on the launch. “We might as well have been a Martian spaceship that had landed on that field.”The timing of a retail concept then unknown in Britain was not auspicious.

The Guardian     May 10, 2025