Last week, ahead of the 6th September London store opening, Marek showed us around the incredibly plush, architectural dream Reserved headquarters in Gdańsk, a pretty Polish beach town. The LPP story, he explains, began in 1989, the year that ended 44 years of communist rule in Poland, when the average salary of Poles was £20 a month. Back then, Poles had to pay for things with coupons, queueing for hours for their allotted sausages at shops with empty shelves, and their prescribed two pairs of shoes a year. “In 1989, we had freedom, but nothing else”, Marek explains, “The first thing we wanted was food, and then garments.” He started LPP two years later in 1991, and launched Reserved in 1998, when the average salary of Poles had risen to £200 a month. The first store was 20 square metres and sold shell-suit style jogging suits – the kind of thing you’d see on Stormzy today and think ‘cool’. For comparison, the new London store is 30 thousand square metres! From truly humble beginnings, Reserved now makes 1.5 billion in sales and has 1700 shops in 20 countries. “We’re proud of what we’ve achieved in 25 years of political freedom”, Marek says.