Clothing sales at M&S have fallen for the seventh quarter in a row. What's gone wrong? And how can it be put it right? We asked experts and fans to come up with an instant rescue plan

Kirstie Allsopp, TV presenter, also designs a homeware range for M&S

Kirstie Allsopp

I'm very proud to have a range in Marks & Spencer, although I think I can be honest about what I feel. I used to buy a lot of clothing from M&S – I've always been a fan, and I adored their Autograph range [famous fashion designers were brought in to collaborate on collections]. There are fashion designers whose stuff I wouldn't buy at the top end, but who did a diffusion line for Autograph when it first started, and I have some pieces from that range that I still wear. But M&S doesn't have that any more.

When I talk to the girls at work – many of them in their mid- to late-20s and on low incomes – they tell me they shop at Primark. I don't see them buying anything from Marks & Spencer. It has become about the food, which out-cools and out-sexes the clothes. Something, somewhere got a little bit lost.

I trust Marks & Spencer, but I don't have the sense any more that I will make a real discovery. My fashion advice mainly comes from weekend newspaper supplements, and I don't see a lot of M&S stuff in them. I know they do makeup, shoes, accessories – but I can't remember the last time I saw something in a magazine and thought, "ooh", and then saw it was from M&S.

M&S can get its position back. The staff have a great attitude, and the company as a whole is a good one. I just think its womenswear has lost its edge.

Jess Cartner-Morley, Guardian fashion editor

Guardian Open Weekend: Jess Cartner Morley

There is one straightforward factor contributing to M&S's woes. There is no one manning the tiller, fashionably speaking. The current collections fall between two reigns: they were conceived after Kate Bostock left last year, but have not been steered by her replacement, Belinda Earl – her influence will not be seen until the first autumn ranges land at the end of this summer. I have observed the dynamics at M&S for some time, and it strikes me that a healthy relationship between the CEO and the person fighting fashion's corner is key to good product. It will be fascinating to see what impact Earl has next season.

In part, the problem for M&S is that the competition has got so much better. The British high-street shopper is now thoroughly spoilt. Once, M&S filled a gap between fast fashion, which was cheap as chips but shoddily made, and the stodgy, elasticated-waistband fare of department store fashion. But the fast-fashion market has improved its production values, while a new category of grownup high street stores, such as Reiss and Cos, has emerged. M&S, once front and centre of our clothing consciousness, has to fight for airspace. There has been a tendency to fight for attention by filling the rails with "trend-led" clothes, which are often successful in winning media attention, but don't deliver strong sales on the shopfloor.

As a nation, we still identify strongly with M&S. It is a part of Britishness in a way no other brand is. Each of us has a an opinion on what M&S should be selling, just as every football fan has a view on the team their manager should field. Here's my own tuppenceworth on how M&S should alter their offer: by refining the colour palette. Walk on to the womenswear floor and you find yourself in a hectic, multicolour world. Less pink, yellow and red, and more bottle-green, navy and off-white would instantly update the environment. Yes, you might annoy the odd customer who was hellbent on fuschia, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

The silver lining is that many women don't realise how much good stuff there still is in M&S. (I'm talking flagship stores. Sorry, provinces.) Recently I've bought a phenomenal leather pencil skirt with a gold zip, beautiful fabric and construction, for under £200, and a cream silk blouse with coral pocket borders that looks like it came from Paris for €200 rather than Oxford Street for £45.

Jenny Eclair, comedian and writer

Jenny Eclair Photograph: Ferdaus Shamim/WireImage

I have had the almost overwhelming desire to snatch things out of the hands of women who are hovering around the Per Una stand, particularly when they are going into Per Una overdrive and getting everything to match. Per Una is the heroin of middle-aged women's clothing. You start off with just a little bit – maybe a waterfall cardigan in jade with some beading around the neckline. Snazzy. And before you know it, your wardrobe is bulging with appliqued skirts and embroidered jumpers. I think it's for those women who have completely lost their inner rock chick and have to find another path.

Marks & Spencer could very easily get it right if they kept it simple. Where they go wrong is when they start to ornament things with frills or beading. What people want is to go to M&S and buy a good mac, a good white shirt, a denim skirt, a jumper, maybe in cashmere. With their colour, they go a little bit lurid – I sometimes go in and it makes my teeth hurt. I do buy from Marks. I buy V-neck jumpers, and black cardigans.

There is a great demographic of peculiar women who can't wait to get to the appliqued-skirt time of life. There is still an M&S die-hard population – you see them in market towns. It's a shrinking breed of women, but I think Marks are still loyal to them.

I gig a lot, and M&S food has completely revolutionised touring, because they're at motorway service stations now. The days of Ginsters sausage rolls are over – now you can get chargrilled squid if you so desire. But I do think somebody needs to take a very stern hand with the clothes. They need to get some stylish middle-aged women, people like India Knight, who could actually just boss them around a bit. They have a terrible tendency to go for lilac clothes. I'd love to go on some kind of panel, giving a thumbs up or down as people were paraded in front of me.

'M&S always used to do well in a recession, but that hasn't happened this time, and I think Mark Bolland (M&S CEO, pictured) has to take responsibility for that,' says retail analyst Richard Perks

Richard Perks, director of retail research, Mintel

There are two main drivers for M&S – womenswear and food. The food is doing well, but the problems are with the womenswear. They did the right thing in splitting it up into different sub-brands, but those brands are now insufficiently differentiated. They're also too "old". The great thing about Per Una when it launched was that it was young fashions engineered for older customers, but the "young" look has gone. Historically, you were dragged in there by your parents and swore never to go in again, and then around the age of 30 you happened to go in and thought, "Oh, that's quite good." But it doesn't seem to be picking up those younger customers now. Debenhams is sitting where M&S should be, and does a good job, because its brands are differentiated.

There's a failure to understand what older people want. Sometimes you feel the merchandise is bought by a 25-year-old [M&S buyer] who has a caricatured granny in mind. Older people don't want to be sold down to. That is why Per Una did so well, because it looked young. That's what they've got to get back to.

M&S always did well in a recession – people went back to it because it was good quality and value. In boom times, it tended to over-engineer its products and they got too expensive. So it would have a bad start to the recession, but it would simplify its products, make them cheaper and clean up – that hasn't happened this time. I think Marc Bolland has to take responsibility for that.

Lead times are long – however much you like the idea of fast fashion, most things have to be planned in advance. Belinda Earl [former chief executive of Debenhams and Jaeger] joined in September, and she couldn't really have any significant impact until autumn/winter this year. Thing have drifted; they need to take those sub-brands and give them their own personality.

Lynne Franks, PR expert and champion for women's empowerment

Lynne Franks Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian

I have bought from Marks & Spencer. Some of the basics are still pretty good and over the years they have had wonderful things – great cashmere, good knitwear. But I went in this season and there was nothing there I wanted to buy. I don't find it enticing, and that's a shame. There are always some good bits, but generally the shape is not right, the cut is not right. What would I suggest they do? Get a new design team.

A lot of women who are not young buy fashion, but wouldn't shop at M&S. I don't think M&S has to go younger, just do better stuff. Women of my age, 50-plus, have money to spend and love fashion. We grew up in the 1960s, and don't want to look like frumps. M&S could really take ownership of that market in the high street, but they have to realise the 50-plus woman today is much more stylish, and knowledgable than their mothers probably were.

Kim Winser, former chief executive of Pringle and Aquascutum, and director of womenswear at Marks & Spencer until 2000. Now runs Winser London

It's all about passion for product. That's what M&S has to turn its attention to – get back to really good, beautiful, quality products. I buy food from M&S, but not clothing – I haven't found that combination of fashionability, style and quality.

They do a number of different brand names – too many. By focusing on a few, they could use each brand to focus on a certain customer group, and gradually build up the value of that brand to that group – they will begin to love it and trust it and know it's for them.

When I was there we launched Autograph. It was about bringing in some of the best designers in Britain and capturing what they were good at. The designer collaborations can work, but only if it really does represent what that designer is famous for.

I don't think it's about the size of the company, I think it's about the people. There are too many excuses about business and bureaucracy, but the company is run by people, and I was definitely left to run womenswear, which at the time was a £2bn business. I was given that responsibility and accountability. I loved it, and as a team of people, that was one of the reasons we had market-share growth, because we really did love the customer and the product. So it can be done, whatever the size of the business, but I think it depends on the people.

Lifestyles change, and it's about a company constantly innovating, looking at what's happening and also predicting what's going to happen. To do that, you have to be absolutely in tune with your customer and what they want, and focus on what your brand is good at. I'm looking from the outside now, but that's where M&S was always a very successful business, because it put the customer first.

Susie Lau, fashion blogger for Style Bubble



Susie Lau Photograph: Kirstin Sinclair/Getty Images

M&S lacks focus in its product. It tries to cater to many different types of women in its various ranges, and doesn't do one thing very well. M&S has come up against companies that do good-quality, timeless fashion with a wider appeal – stores such as Uniqlo or Cos. M&S was once renowned for being the store where you bought your first bra, for instance, but there are so many more options now.

We have a nostalgic attachment to M&S, but I don't know many people my age who go in there. The only time I do is when I'm shopping with my boyfriend's nan. I do look at its lookbooks [the catalogues produced for the fashion press], and I wrote about a selection of M&S stuff for the Guardian a few months ago. It does have nice products, but it has a problem communicating that within its stores. The outlets are very rigid, they don't entice you in as a fashion store. Even if they have good products, they're buried behind the food store, or you have to go through various ranges to get to where you want.

I don't think M&S needs to position itself as a fashion-forward store. It's more about finding what it does best – it's really strong in cashmere, in basics – and concentrating on that rather than trying to cater to everyone's tastes.