(Bloomberg) -- Marks & Spencer Group Plc has a new supporter for its troubled clothing business: Meghan Markle.
The Duchess of Sussex is calling on the U.K. retailer to design a clothing collection with Smart Works, a charity for working women that she backs. Other collaborators include department-store operator John Lewis Partnership Plc, apparel chain Jigsaw and designer Misha Nonoo.
It’s a much-needed endorsement for Marks & Spencer, whose clothing chief Jill McDonald stepped down last month after less than two years in the role. Chief Executive Officer Steve Rowe now oversees that part of the business, which has been losing ground to online fashion retailers like Asos Plc and Boohoo Group Plc. Sales in M&S’s clothing and home business fell 3.6% for the 12 months through March.
Marks & Spencer shares rose as much as 1.8% early Thursday in London.
The retailer has worked for two years with the charity, which helps women enter the corporate world by providing them with appropriate clothing for interviews. For each item purchased from the partners, one is donated to Smart Works.
The charity’s current clothing offering can sometimes “be a potpourri of mismatched sizes and colors, not always the right stylistic choices or range of sizes,” the duchess wrote in a Vogue article. Under the collaboration, confirmed by a Marks & Spencer spokeswoman, Markle said she asked her new partners “if they were willing to design a capsule collection of more classic options for a workwear wardrobe.”
Smart Works says it dressed 27% more women this July than the previous year as it got a boost from Markle’s involvement as a royal patron.
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