Latest news with #Harlequin
Fashion Network
07-05-2025
- Business
- Fashion Network
SGS to rebrand Atria Watford, brings back Harlequin name
What's in a name? Quite a lot actually. The operator of Atria Watford certainly feels that way as it has just announced that it's bringing back the name Harlequin to the mall. SGS Group said it's restoring the 'iconic' name as Watford's 'flagship destination enters a bold new era'. The change comes as the UK increasingly sees divided performances in its malls sector with so-called supermalls — of which Atria/Harlequin is one — leaving smaller sites trailing. That's both in terms of overall footfall/tenant sales and their ability to attract the best retailers. Calling Atria, sorry Harlequin, 'one of the country's most dynamic shopping, retail and leisure destinations', SGS said that the centre will officially revert to its 'original, much-loved name' this summer. 'Backed by overwhelming public sentiment and a deep-rooted local connection, the name change is more than nostalgic,' it explained. 'This is a strategic rebrand that reflects a significant investment drive designed to elevate the asset's retail, food, and leisure offer, enabled by the corporate restructuring of the centre's owners in 2024'. There will be 'vibrant new signage, an expressive new logo, and a brand-new website — all part of a dynamic marketing campaign led by SGS's retained agency, BWP Group'. SGS CEO Claire Barber said this year 'marks a pivotal moment for this centre. Our decision to bring back the Harlequin name is rooted in what the community told us — it's part of Watford's identity. But this is about the future, not the past. Through bold leasing, creative activation, and strategic investment, we're transforming Harlequin into a flagship destination for the region, built around experience, quality, and commercial performance'. The centre has a 'high-performing retail mix' covering a wide range of piece points including Apple, Mango, Boss, Flannels, Uniqlo, Next, Zara, Oliver Bonas, H&M, and Primark. There's also a strong leisure and dining offer there. Complemented by a curated programme of immersive events — such as the recent Self-Care Fun Fair — the overall approach is designed to 'deepen engagement, extend dwell time, and grow catchment reach'. SGS said the rebrand is 'a cornerstone' of its wider repositioning strategy 'to evolve Harlequin into a next-generation, all-day and evening destination that commands attention across the leasing, investment, and consumer markets'.
Fashion Network
07-05-2025
- Business
- Fashion Network
SGS to rebrand Atria Watford, brings back Harlequin name
Calling Atria, sorry Harlequin, 'one of the country's most dynamic shopping, retail and leisure destinations', SGS said that the centre will officially revert to its 'original, much-loved name' this summer. 'Backed by overwhelming public sentiment and a deep-rooted local connection, the name change is more than nostalgic,' it explained. 'This is a strategic rebrand that reflects a significant investment drive designed to elevate the asset's retail, food, and leisure offer, enabled by the corporate restructuring of the centre's owners in 2024'. There will be 'vibrant new signage, an expressive new logo, and a brand-new website — all part of a dynamic marketing campaign led by SGS's retained agency, BWP Group'. SGS CEO Claire Barber said this year 'marks a pivotal moment for this centre. Our decision to bring back the Harlequin name is rooted in what the community told us — it's part of Watford's identity. But this is about the future, not the past. Through bold leasing, creative activation, and strategic investment, we're transforming Harlequin into a flagship destination for the region, built around experience, quality, and commercial performance'. The centre has a 'high-performing retail mix' covering a wide range of piece points including Apple, Mango, Boss, Flannels, Uniqlo, Next, Zara, Oliver Bonas, H&M, and Primark. There's also a strong leisure and dining offer there. Complemented by a curated programme of immersive events — such as the recent Self-Care Fun Fair — the overall approach is designed to 'deepen engagement, extend dwell time, and grow catchment reach'. SGS said the rebrand is 'a cornerstone' of its wider repositioning strategy 'to evolve Harlequin into a next-generation, all-day and evening destination that commands attention across the leasing, investment, and consumer markets'.
Fashion Network
07-05-2025
- Business
- Fashion Network
SGS to rebrand Atria Watford, brings back Harlequin name
What's in a name? Quite a lot actually. The operator of Atria Watford certainly feels that way as it has just announced that it's bringing back the name Harlequin to the mall. SGS Group said it's restoring the 'iconic' name as Watford's 'flagship destination enters a bold new era'. The change comes as the UK increasingly sees divided performances in its malls sector with so-called supermalls — of which Atria/Harlequin is one — leaving smaller sites trailing. That's both in terms of overall footfall/tenant sales and their ability to attract the best retailers. Calling Atria, sorry Harlequin, 'one of the country's most dynamic shopping, retail and leisure destinations', SGS said that the centre will officially revert to its 'original, much-loved name' this summer. 'Backed by overwhelming public sentiment and a deep-rooted local connection, the name change is more than nostalgic,' it explained. 'This is a strategic rebrand that reflects a significant investment drive designed to elevate the asset's retail, food, and leisure offer, enabled by the corporate restructuring of the centre's owners in 2024'. There will be 'vibrant new signage, an expressive new logo, and a brand-new website — all part of a dynamic marketing campaign led by SGS's retained agency, BWP Group'. SGS CEO Claire Barber said this year 'marks a pivotal moment for this centre. Our decision to bring back the Harlequin name is rooted in what the community told us — it's part of Watford's identity. But this is about the future, not the past. Through bold leasing, creative activation, and strategic investment, we're transforming Harlequin into a flagship destination for the region, built around experience, quality, and commercial performance'. The centre has a 'high-performing retail mix' covering a wide range of piece points including Apple, Mango, Boss, Flannels, Uniqlo, Next, Zara, Oliver Bonas, H&M, and Primark. There's also a strong leisure and dining offer there. Complemented by a curated programme of immersive events — such as the recent Self-Care Fun Fair — the overall approach is designed to 'deepen engagement, extend dwell time, and grow catchment reach'. SGS said the rebrand is 'a cornerstone' of its wider repositioning strategy 'to evolve Harlequin into a next-generation, all-day and evening destination that commands attention across the leasing, investment, and consumer markets'.
New York Times
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
They Were Identical ‘Twinnies' Who Charmed Orwell, Camus and More
Move over, Véra. See ya, Zelda. Make way for Celia and Mamaine. The dazzling Paget sisters, as they've been rebranded by the U.S. edition of a book published in the United Kingdom as 'The Quality of Love,' were identical twins, that category of perpetual aesthetic and scientific fascination. Born in 1916, orphaned at 12 and educated unconventionally, they grew up to be vivid but fragile poppies among tall waving wheat stalks of midcentury intellectualism: George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Bertrand Russell, Edmund Wilson, André Malraux, Benjamin Britten, etc. Though the sisters did not have public bylines, they wrote prolifically and vividly in private. Celia edited a selection of Mamaine's letters to Koestler, the Austro-Hungarian polymath who was her longtime and somewhat bitter sweetheart, which was published in 1985. (True, when the general onslaught of correspondence proved overwhelming, Mamaine complained to Celia: 'It is a stinking bore.') Forty years later, Celia's daughter, Ariane Bankes, having inherited a 'capacious and sooty black' tin trunk stuffed with envelopes and folders, has produced an enchanting double-helix biography of her mother and aunt. Without undermining the scholarly significance and rigor of 'The Dazzling Paget Sisters,' let me note that this relatively slender book contains enough mad capers, heaving proposals and dramatic death throes to be a veritable Harlequin romance for the literary set, with a dash of Sweet Valley High. ('Even Sartre was hoodwinked by Celia pretending to be Mamaine on a later trip to Paris.') From the beginning, these twins seemed to toggle with particular agility between the planes of Trivial and Tragic that Koestler theorized govern human existence. Their mother, Georgina, suffered complications giving birth and perished a week afterward. Their early childhood in rural Suffolk was idyllic — books, birdsong, bulrushes — but socially isolated. When they were 7, their doting father, Eric, whom they called Mr. Sardine, was diagnosed with an incurable disease of the nervous system. They learned of his death in boarding school, and were subsequently entrusted to the care of a rich but stingy and eccentric uncle: 'a conservative of the deepest dye' who believed in astrology and reincarnation, and his French wife, Germaine, nicknamed Ging-Ging and enamored of enormous garden parties. Chronic asthma led Celia and Mamaine to finishing school, and a dawning cosmopolitanism, in the Swiss Alps. They loved music and languages and hoped to attend university (one of their final joint undertakings was the study of ancient Greek) but instead, cursed with good looks, were pressed to come out for two seasons as debutantes in taffeta gowns. There they met a fellow society skeptic, Jessica Mitford, as well as Dick Wyndham, a 20-years-older dashing character at the center of the Bright Young People who fell madly in love with Mamaine. The press also fell madly in love with the Pagets. A weekly called The Sketch featured the ''twinnies' and their twin apartments.' They modeled, traveled, practiced nursing in the same ward during the Blitz (figuring they'd rather be killed together) and were, long before Facebook, highly 'friendable,' as Celia put it. She would work for a series of journals whose titles rang with the ideological excitement of the era: Horizon, Occident, Polemic. Mamaine, meanwhile, became the devoted amanuensis, boon companion and eventually wife to Koestler, who called her Mermaid, refused her children and would have periodic sulks about her indifferent housekeeping as well as the roiling state of the world and politics, adroitly glossed here. The couple were among the first visitors to the new state of Israel, where she warded off robbers by shouting 'Thieves in the Night,' the title of his Zionist novel, at them in Hebrew. Wilson, the portly critic and Mary McCarthy's soon-to-be ex, was smitten with her as well — 'unfortunately it is a bad book so my immortality is not assured,' she wrote of his 'Europe Without Baedaker.' And after Koestler threw a piece of bread at her at the Scheherazade, a Paris nightclub, resulting in a black eye, she swooned for Camus. Their stolen week exploring the Provençal landscape is travelogue of a lost Eden, illustrated with hitherto unpublished snapshots from the trunk. 'She warned that he would forget her. 'Of course, one forgets everything,'' Camus replied. (Nothing like an absurdist French lover!) 'He would simply not want to live in a world in which he had forgotten her.' As for Celia, after a brief first marriage, she was courted by Orwell, who shortly before he published '1984' and succumbed to tuberculosis would send her a list of crypto-communists and 'fellow travelers,' people he believed sympathetic to Stalinism. Filled with foreboding about 'the graveyards of individual freedoms,' 'The Dazzling Paget Sisters' nonetheless does plenty of whistling past those graveyards. It's lacy and necessary filigree between the sober straight lines of history.
USA Today
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Ana Huang gets back in her groove with steamy, billionaire romance 'King of Envy'
Ana Huang gets back in her groove with steamy, billionaire romance 'King of Envy' As a young reader (probably too young, she admits), Ana Huang scouted her favorite romance books at the supermarket. Her journey with the genre started, like many others, with Harlequin trade paperbacks. Here, Huang could find a guaranteed happy ending and arcs that made her favorite fictional characters feel real. But as a Chinese American reader, she rarely read any with characters who looked like her. Now, Huang is dominating the romance genre herself, even solidifying a place on the Top 5 bestselling BookTok authors with over 1.47 million copies sold in 2024, according to Forbes. Publishing is still a largely white industry. Four out of those top five bestselling authors are white women – Huang is the only Asian author and author of color represented in the entire Top 10. As we kick off Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, USA TODAY talked with Huang about the representation she wants to see in the romance genre and how she crafted her new dark, steamy novel 'King of Envy,' out now from Bloom Books. King of Envy is a 'return to form' for Huang 'King of Envy' is Huang's 14th book and the fifth in her 'Kings of Sin' series, each of which focuses on one of the seven deadly sins. The series uses the beloved billionaire romance trope – thank you 'Fifty Shades of Grey' – often combining glitz and wealth with high-stakes action. In 'King of Envy,' our pair is the tortured billionaire Vuk Markovic and renowned supermodel Ayana Kidane. When the novel opens, Ayana is engaged to Jordan, one of New York's most eligible bachelors, but you quickly learn it's a sham so that he can get his inheritance and she can get paid off enough to leave her abusive agency. It's a perfect plan, except for when she finds herself falling for his best man – Vuk. The story is teeming with tension and morally gray love interests and a healthy dose of the 'touch her and you die' trope. While her recent projects have had 'softer' leading men and themes, Huang calls 'King of Envy' and its palm-sweating suspense a 'return to form.' She listened to angsty songs like 'Let the World Burn' by Chris Grey and 'Moth to a Flame' by The Weeknd and Swedish House Mafia to set the tone for 'King of Envy.' 'King of Envy' – like any Ana Huang book – has plenty of spice Having written many 'spicy' scenes across 14 books, Huang knows a thing or two about how to convey sex on the page. It starts with the emotion, she says. Rather than structuring a bedroom scene on mechanics alone, she asks the characters what they need to get emotionally out of a sexual encounter. But how do you keep it from being formulaic? She admits it's harder to write steamy scenes the more books she writes. 'I tend not to be as liberal with the spice scenes as maybe my earlier stuff, just because I want to make sure they all serve a purpose. But also, I'll be honest, sometimes I get a little bit tired,' she says, laughing. 'I still love them, but it just takes a little bit more out of me.' Still, there's plenty of spice in 'King of Envy.' Though romance is often dismissed as 'fluff' or 'guilty pleasure reads,' Huang says she's proud to offer a safe space for readers (especially women) to explore their sexuality. Readers told USA TODAY earlier this year that spicy romance is empowering and even translates off the page into developing healthy sex lives. The genre is booming and driving the publishing industry. It's so big, it's crossing over to the silver screen with adaptations like "It Ends With Us" and Huang's own "Twisted" series coming to Netflix. 'It's a place for play and exploration,' Huang says. 'And I love that romance is a genre that centers female desire and pleasure. They can take agency over that. You can't really say that of a lot of other genres.' In a video she made for Audible in 2023, Huang told the story of the time she told an Uber driver she wrote romance. He gave her a pamphlet of religious teachings. It's an attitude many readers and non-readers alike have – that romance has no substance. But most of that is coming from people who don't read the genre at all. 'It's so frustrating, as an author, to see those conversations play out from people outside of the genre,' she tells USA TODAY. 'Obviously, a lot of it is rooted in misogyny … but I think the romance community is strong. It's been here for so long, and the umbrella is growing every day.' Huang's books prioritize diversity. She wants publishing to be the same. A hallmark of Huang's work is her diverse cast of characters across race, ethnicity and life experience. In 'King of Envy,' Vuk is selectively non-verbal and uses American Sign Language, which Huang included because it's a demographic she doesn't often see represented in the romance genre. Because the Kings of Sin series is set largely in New York City, one of the most diverse major cities in the U.S., not creating a diverse cast of characters would be a 'disservice,' she says. She hopes to see the same reflected in publishing, at every level. 'At the end of the day, publishing is always about the bottom line,' Huang says. 'But sometimes I find it a little frustrating because they'll say, ... 'We published this book and it just didn't sell that well and it just happened to be a diverse book by a diverse author.' And I'm like, 'Well, did you put as many marketing resources into this book?' 'This is something that needs to be at every level," she continues. "You need to have BIPOC acquiring editors. You need that type of representation on the marketing team. It can't just be like, 'We acquired this book to say that we did it.'' Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY's Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you're reading at cmulroy@
