Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge
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Authors: Lindy Woodhead
SHOPPING, SEDUCTION & MR SELFRIDGE
LINDY WOODHEAD
worked in journalism, film and fashion publicity (the latter for Browns of South Molton Street) before establishing her own public relations agency – WPR – in 1974. Joined by her husband Colin as business partner in 1976, they have been pioneering exponents of specialist development of building prestige brand reputation for many years. WPR’s international fashion, fine jewellery and retail clients have included Ferragamo, Cerruti 1881, Wolford, Karl Lagerfeld, Louis Vuitton, Krizia, Rossetti, Yves St Laurent, Brioni, Hermes and Garrard & Co. In the late 1980s, Lindy also took up an external appointment as the first woman on the board of directors at Harvey Nichols.
In 2000, aged 50, Lindy retired to develop her writing career. Her first book,
War Paint
, was published in 2003 and is the subject of an internationally networked American television documentary.
Currently working on her next book, she also writes consumer-related and lifestyle features for various publications. Lindy and her husband have two sons and divide their time between south-west London and south-west France.
ALSO BY LINDY WOODHEAD
War Paint: Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden –
Their Lives, Their Times, Their Rivalry
LINDY WOODHEAD
This revised edition published in Great Britain in 2012 by
Profile Books Ltd
3a Exmouth House
Pine Street
Exmouth Market
London EC1R 0JH
www.profilebooks.com
Copyright © Lindy Woodhead, 2007, 2008, 2012
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Typeset in Goudy Old Style by MacGuru Ltd
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by
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The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 78125 058 7
eISBN 978 1 84765 964 4
For Colin, Ollie and Max
Praise for
Shopping, Seduction and Mr Selfridge
‘Gripping and excellently researched’
Literary Review
‘More of a social history than a biography, the book is brilliantly researched and the author draws the reader into the fascinating world of the early-twentieth century with skill. The life of Harry Selfridge is described with humour, sensitivity and sympathy … a hugely enjoyable read. I found myself enthralled with the world of Harry Selfridge, nearly falling in love with him myself.’
Sunday Independent
, Ireland
‘In this lively and compelling biography, Lindy Woodhead follows the glory years of a charismatic big spender, whose ill-advised expansion would eventually be his downfall. Her pacy narrative takes in his glamorous women, his social set, the sexing up of shopping, and seismic shifts in society.’
Director
‘This dissection of the allure, power and modern-day presence of department stores, via the history of the man behind Selfridges, is a witty and erudite look at the UK’s shopping evolution.’
Easy Living
‘A fascinating look at the life of a man who started a retail revolution’
Birmingham Mail
‘Not only a biography of the man who invented the glamour of the department store and was probably responsible for our national shopping addiction, but also a fascinating look at the cultural and social background of the early-twentieth century.’
Evening Standard
‘Lindy Woodhead shows in this lively and entertaining account it was Selfridge’s love of theatre that informed both his personal and his professional life … (she) adds enormously to this fascinating history by the breadth of her research and by her thorough knowledge of the retail context.’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Perhaps the first English shop owner to identify shopping as thrilling, sexy entertainment. In this energetic and wonderfully detailed biography, Lindy Woodhead tells not only the story of the rise and dramatic fall of Selfridge, the man, but also provides an enthralling description of fashion, politics, music and dance, the arts, the sciences, advertising and the use of the media.’ Juliet Nicolson,
Evening Standard
‘Far more than just a profile of one of the world’s great shopkeepers, Lindy Woodhead’s biography of Harry Gordon Selfridge provides a rich social history in a time of great change. However much Woodhead’s book marvels at Selfridge’s many achievements, it is nevertheless a balanced story of two halves: the first dedicated to progress, the second to Selfridge’s demise. He has one great weakness – his own self-destruct button. He was a gambler and a firm believer in success through excess.’
Spectator
‘London, 1909. American whiz-kid Harry Selfridge arrived from Chicago … and shopping for fun had arrived. Selfridge’s became the template for the super-stores and throbbing centres familiar to shoppers today. As Lindy Woodhead explains in her formidably detailed book about the “showman of shopping”, Selfridge’s store was an absolute marvel.’
Daily Mail
‘Lindy Woodhead paints a colourful picture of the American who turned Edwardian England on to shopping, and who transformed shopping into a democratic sport, entertainment for the masses and a truly capitalist endeavour.’
Women’s Wear Daily
‘The story of Harry Gordon Selfridge (or HGS as he drew with his fingers if he found dust on a store showcase) is the tale of a remarkable individual … Lindy Woodhead relates this morality tale with vigour and glorious enthusiasm. She brings to vivid life the cracking open of the social carapace of aristocracy and the frenetic hedonism of the Jazz Age. The social revolution in retailing is described with passion and verve. And even the background of Chicago under construction has an energy that sends the book racing along – she rounds out the character of “Mr Selfridge” by calling him a “jigsaw puzzle” with an essential gambler’s soul.’ Suzy Menkes,
International Herald Tribune
‘Lindy Woodhead returns to the glittering Edwardian era and the roaring Twenties with a biography of one of the pioneers of modern retailing. The book is brilliantly researched and the author draws the reader into the fascinating world of the early 20th century with great skill. The life of Harry Selfridge is described with humour, sensitivity and sympathy.’ Susanne O’Leary,
Irish Sunday Independent
Woman was what the shops were fighting over when they competed, it was woman whom they ensnared with the constant trap of their bargains, after stunning her with their displays. They had aroused new desires in her flesh, they were a huge temptation to which she must fatally succumb, first of all by giving in to the purchases of a good housewife, then seduced by vanity and finally consumed.
Emile Zola,
Au Bonheur des Dames
(1881)
When I die I want it said of me, ‘He dignified and ennobled commerce.’
Harry Gordon Selfridge (1856–1947)
Introduction: Consuming Passions
2. Giving the Ladies What They Want
3. The Customer is Always Right
2. Lois Selfridge, Harry’s mother, in 1906 at the age of 71
4. Oxford Street at the corner of Duke Street,
c.
1907, before the construction of Selfridge’s
6. One of the series of advertisements commissioned to launch Selfridge’s in 1909
7. A horse-drawn bus advertising Selfridge’s
8. One of Selfridge’s advertisements created for popular women’s magazines
9. Harry Selfridge, Harley Granville-Barker and Arnold Bennett, 1911
10. An afternoon fashion show on the Selfridge’s roof terrace,
c.
1925
11. An interior of Selfridge’s,
c.
1910
12. A Selfridge’s window display,
c.
1925
13. Harry and his daughter Rosalie Selfridge at Chicago’s Grand Passenger Station, 1911
14. A Selfridge’s delivery van with women drivers during the First World War
15. The French
chanteuse
Gaby Deslys
16. A fashion show of leather flying suits on the store’s roof-top Observation Tower, 1919
17. Harry Selfridge and his daughter Violette de Sibour, 1928
18. Highcliffe Castle, Christchurch
19. Harry Selfridge playing poker with friends aboard the
Conqueror
, 1930
20. The
Conqueror
moored in Southampton Water
21. The Dolly Sisters with Harry and his daughter Beatrice in 1926
22. A striking tennis-themed window display
23. A Surrealist window display promoting bath towels, complete with bathing lady
24. Selfridge’s cosmetics buyer, Nellie Elt, by the Elizabeth Arden counter,
c.
1925
25. Otis escalators were installed at Selfridge’s in 1926
26. Harry Selfridge’s last mistress, the actress Marcelle Rogez
27. The film director Frank Capra signing the autograph window at Selfridge’s in 1938
28. Selfridge’s exterior decoration for the Coronation of King George VI in May 1937
CONSUMING PASSIONS
T
he rise of the department store – or what in Paris were more gracefully called
les grands magasins –
in the second half of the nineteenth century was a phenomenon that encompassed fashion, advertising, entertainment, emergent new technology, architecture and, above all, seduction. These forces evolved to merge into businesses that Emile Zola astutely called ‘the great cathedrals of shopping’, and vast fortunes were made by the men who owned them as they tapped into the female passion for shopping. But arguably no one man grasped the concept of consumption as sensual entertainment better than the maverick American retailer, Harry Gordon Selfridge, who opened his eponymous store on London’s Oxford Street in 1909.