Department Store
Flamboyant American retailer Harry Gordon Selfridge introduced Londoners to a whole new shopping experience, one honed in the department stores of late-19th century America.
Flamboyant American retailer Harry Gordon Selfridge introduced Londoners to a whole new shopping experience, one honed in the department stores of late-19th century America. He swept away previous shopkeepers鈥 customs of keeping shopper and merchandise apart to one where 鈥渏ust looking鈥 was positively encouraged. In the full-page newspaper adverts Selfridge took out when his eponymous department store opened in London in the early 1900s, he compared the 鈥減leasures of shopping鈥 to those of 鈥渟ight-seeing鈥. He installed the largest plate glass windows in the world 鈥 and created, behind them, the most sumptuous shop window displays. His adverts pointedly made clear that the 鈥渨hole British public鈥 would be welcome 鈥 鈥渘o cards of admission are required鈥. Recognising that his female customers offered profitable opportunities that competitors were neglecting, one of his quietly revolutionary moves was the introduction of a ladies鈥 lavatory. Selfridge saw that women might want to stay in town all day, without having to use an insalubrious public convenience or retreat to a respectable hotel for tea whenever they wanted to relieve themselves. As Tim Harford explains, one of Selfridge鈥檚 biographers even thinks he 鈥渃ould justifiably claim to have helped emancipate women.鈥
Producer: Ben Crighton
Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon
(Images: Selfridges Christmas shop window, Credit: Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images)
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Sources and related links
Lindy Woodhead 听- Shopping, Seduction & Mr Selfridge, Profile Books, 2007听
Frank Trentmann - Empire of Things London: Allen Lane 2016听
Steven Johnson - Wonderland New York: Riverhead Books 2016听
Harry E. Resseguie - Alexander Turney Stewart and the Development of the Department Store, 1823-1876, The Business History Review, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Autumn, 1965), pp. 301-322听
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