Has fashion at M&S finally turned a corner?

Brown, suede, A-line, mid-calf, pockets: it might not set your pulse racing, but for the fashion press currently enthralled by the 1970s, these are the vital statistics of the biggest skirt of the summer. The major surprise, however, is that it is about to hit the rails in Marks & Spencer.

Discussing what's wrong with the clothes at Britain's biggest retailer has become something of a national sport. Over 14 consecutive quarters, the company's sales of clothing, footwear and homewares have declined. Complaints about shoddy quality, frumpy collections, depressing store interiors and a frustratingly rickety website appeared to have fallen on deaf ears at M&S.

Today, however: jubilation! For after almost four years of decline, clothing sales are on the up again. Like-for-like sales in its general merchandise arm, which includes womenswear, rose 0.7 per cent in the 13 weeks to March 28 - evidence that the changes brought in by style director Belinda Earl are finally bearing fruit.

The Summer of Love now looks to be less a hopeful moniker for one of the retailer's key spring/summer 2015 trends, and more a titular marker of the season in which Earl and her team of 70-or-so designers finally cracked M&S's sartorial conundrum.

But back to the mythic Autograph suede skirt. Even before its hits stores next Friday, with a price tag of £199, it has already been featured in just about every fashion magazine and newspaper style section under the sun (a smug aside: the Telegraphteam flagged it up on our pages way back in November).

Alexa Chung, fashion's favourite It-girl and usually to be found upholstered in outfits from the hippest London designers, has already worn it. Olivia Palermo, a New York socialite with an immaculate Upper East Side wardrobe to match, swiftly followed suit. More than 3,500 customers have registered their interest in the skirt - to which M&S responded by buying five times more units than originally planned and bringing the in-store delivery date forward by almost a month. Think £199 is a bit steep? Then join the 2,500 other shoppers who've plumped for the faux suede version, available for a very reasonable £39.50.

Earl can take full credit for the phenomenon. Since she arrived at M&S at the end of 2012, she has actively courted the fashion press with "hero" pieces to keep them happy - a previous hit was 2013's powder pink coat, which became so ubiquitous on fashion pages that it acquired a definite article. But while these strategic samples won strong reviews from the fashion editors, they've simultaneously served to enrage shoppers.

M&S has admitted to deliberately limiting the availability of some of its most lauded products in order to protect its fashion cache. Marc Bolland, the (formerly beleaguered) chief executive, got into hot water when he admitted in November 2013 that M&S had controlled stock levels: "Some garments, you do not want more than 3,000. You do not want 40,000 of the same coats walking around. That is probably not the way to also create some of the stylishness."

Frustrating though that is for shoppers - M&S's Best of British line, for instance, is only available in 15 branches - Earl insists she's committed to ensuring key pieces get distributed everywhere from Bromley to Hereford to the website, not just in the Marble Arch flagship. Still, you've got to be quick off the mark: she reported that younger customers are primed to purchase months ahead of wear, meaning that winter coats get snapped up in August.

The point of these fashion pieces, however, is not sales: it's luring punters in for the basic stuff. Lingerie, a former jewel in the M&S crown that had become outmoded, has been given a boost courtesy of a wildly successful collaboration with the model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.

Her debut, vintage-inspired line was the retailer's fastest-selling lingerie collection when it launched in 2012. This quarter, Rosie for Autograph sold nearly 400,000 items, up 108 per cent on the year, helped in part by the launch of a rose perfume range, which has sold over 45,000 items.

It's all very well luring in customers with strategically stylish items, but how to prevent them from recoiling when they catch sight of themselves in a dingily lit changing room, or from fleeing the crumpled cornucopia of tired-looking clothes arranged in a muddled store layout? Earl is on the case, and has spent the past year transforming the dreary realities of shopping in your average M&S branch.

"We're on a big programme of refurbishment," she said when we met in November, at a preview of the spring collection. "Seventy stores representing over a third of our sales have had their womenswear and menswear departments refreshed, and it's rolling down to smaller stores to give a simpler shopping journey. Whereas in the past the shop floor would have been a sea of staples, we're dividing them up into sections: coats, dresses, cashmere. Limited Edition, our fashion line, goes into every single store now, with new pieces dropping every two weeks."

The design team is also increasingly thinking in terms of outfits. Departments have been decluttered, with a fifth of the stock removed to make way for more styled-up mannequins. "We've been thinking about how our customer combines separates in order to put a look together," said Earl. "We're using more photography in store and installing more mannequins to illustrate which pieces partner others best."

Even the dreaded Per Una range - billed as a more feminine line that offers colour and texture but which has too often resembled a one-stop shop for a hoary old Widow Twankey wannabe - has also had a modern makeover: waterfall cardigans have been replaced by kimono jackets, and lace shift dresses have triumphed over ill-fitting wrap jersey numbers. Twiggy's line, reportedly performing well two years after it launched, has some passable silky trench coats.

Perhaps the biggest area of improvement has been denim. Remarkably, M&S has the biggest market share in womenswear denim in the UK, at nearly 10 per cent. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised: what was once a workaday fabric got a high fashion makeover on the spring/summer 2015 catwalks at Gucci and Chloé, and M&S has benefitted from the trickle-down effect: they have sold nearly 314,000 women's jeans this quarter, up 18 per cent on the previous. Of the seven shapes for spring, the surprise hit has been the 70s-inspired Limited Edition flares. M&S reports they've sold more than 6,300 pairs. Who knew the nation's jeans-wearers were so brave?

They would have needed some of that courage to face the M&S website prior to its relaunch in February last year. A doddery old bumpkin of a digital store, it offered plenty of choice - displayed in the most mind-numbingly lacklustre manner. Its newer incarnation is no longer hosted by Amazon - unsurprisingly, a platform for selling books doesn't work so well with dresses - it has more glossy pictures and outfit suggestions, and in the past three months more some 2.5million visitors have visited the Style & Living section. There's also a new zoom function. Truly, M&S is moving with the times.

But let's not get carried away. A 0.7 per cent increase in clothing sales is too small a result to be heralded as a swashbuckling sea-change. But it's a start - indicative of the fact that M&S is finally not only listening to its customers' views, but acting on them.

Ultimately, there appears to be an acceptance that the average teenager is not its target shopper; and that trying to play Primark at its own fast-paced, ethically dubious game is a mistake. What it needs to build on is a conviction held by Earl that M&S customers are willing to be guided towards well-cut, well-edited outfits in good quality fabrics. They don't necessarily have to be fashionable - they just need to be stylishly executed.

There is still an enormous amount of affection for this brand, from loyal octogenarians to Percy Pig-munching twentysomethings. "We're less concerned with age, more about attitude," Earl said. "Customers are starting to notice our fashion, but we've got to consistently deliver season on season." Good luck to her.

Read more at:backless wedding dresses|wedding dress uk

Sheinbridal awayls ranks on the top upon selecting wedding dresses and bridesmaid dresses for people. Whichever dresses you want and whatever dresses you like, you can find it on sheinbridal.co.uk which offer all kinds of dresses on styles, colors