History of Shopping
clothing and possessions to indicate their social status. Spending fuelled the Victorian economy – business boomed. Following the abolishment of excise duty on glass in
1861, window displays became increasingly important. Harry Gordon Selfridge enlisted American visual display artist Edward Goldsman to design the windows for the opening of Selfridges in 1909. Such was the frenzy of publicity that it took 30 police offi cers to hold back the crowds. Creator of the ‘theatre of retail’, Selfridge prided himself on being one step ahead, showcasing tomorrow’s trends today. Not much has changed: in 2007 the store announced the launch of its Wonder Room, a retail space dedicated to luxury items, and last September shoe addicts queued for hours to enter the new Shoe Lounge, with 4,000 pairs on display. It’s the largest shoe shop in the world, bigger than the ground fl oor of Tate Modern. The concept of ‘going shopping’ had arrived, but that
didn’t mean people were pounding the pavements. Quite the opposite, in fact: if you were upper or middle class shopkeepers would bring their wares out to your waiting carriage, and food suppliers would deliver to your cook or housekeeper at the servants’ entrance of your home. Newspaper advertising and mail order were in vogue, and following in the footsteps of Georgian bazaars, such
DID YOU KNOW? 1
The average woman spends
eight years of her life shopping. That’s 399 hours and 46 minutes each year – 48 hours and 51 minutes of which are spent window shopping.
2
www.britain-magazine.com
In 1910 Selfridges opened the
world’s first ground floor beauty department. It now sells 7,700 lipsticks, 2,800 mascaras and 1,000 nail polishes every week.
3
Noël Coward once bought an alligator
for Christmas from the Harrods pet shop, and author A A Milne found the original Winnie-the- Pooh for his son Christopher Robin in the toy department.
Mason began in 1707 when Hugh Mason let the spare room of his house to William Fortnum, a footman in Queen Anne’s household.
4
The partnership of Fortnum &
bought a toy bear from Selfridges for his wife. They called him Paddington and, two years later, the first story of his adventures was published.
5
On Christmas Eve 1956 Michael Bond
6
The silver replica of Harrods was a
gift to its Managing Directors from Gordon Selfridge in 1927, after he lost a bet about who would make more profits that year.
visit by Mr Heinz, an American carrying samples of his canned food. They bought everything he had, and thus introduced baked beans to Britain.
7 BRITAIN 59
In 1886 Fortnum & Mason were paid a
Clockwise from top left above: Berry Bros and Rudd wine merchants; Burlington Arcade; Harvey Nichols; Selfridges under construction, 1909; The Shambles, York; Carnaby Street in the 60s; The Victoria Quarter, Leeds; The Harrods Christmas lights; The Armani store at Harrods; Burlington Arcade, 1819
as the Soho Bazaar (1816) and French stores Bon Marché and Louvre, department stores were born. Forward- thinking Charles Henry Harrod took over a small shop in Knightsbridge in 1849, and starting with a staff of four, built up a profi table business selling medicines, perfumes, stationery, fruit and vegetables. By 1880 Harrods had taken over the adjacent buildings, and employed 100 people. In 1898, it installed the world’s fi rst escalator – nervous customers were offered a brandy at the top to recover from their ‘ordeal’. Today, the store continues to dazzle, and not just because of the 12,000 light bulbs that pick out its famous facade. Covering one million square feet of shopping space, with over 5,000 staff in its 330 different departments, Harrods regularly attracts 100,000 visitors a day, all keen to see the latest fashions and furnishings, and revel in the general glitz and glamour. The legendary Christmas window displays go all out to impress shoppers, and to tempt them away from the other retail temple moments up the road: Harvey Nichols. The building we see today dates from 1880, although
Benjamin Harvey fi rst opened his linen shop in a terraced house on this spot in 1813. The business passed to his daughter who teamed up with Colonel Nichols and sold oriental carpets, silks and luxury goods as well as linens.
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