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Abstract
The Second World War disrupted the usual networks and geographies of London fashion, changing the way fashion was made and sold in the city. Taking Bentalls department store in Kingston Upon Thames as a case study, this article explores how this disruption created new opportunities for suburban shops to challenge the West End’s supremacy as they key site for London fashion retail in the immediate postwar era. It explores how Bentalls pioneered innovative retail methodologies that satisfied consumers’ desire for individuality and plenty at a time of austerity, and played an important role in developing retail methodologies for selling to the newly emerging teenage consumer. This article argues that Bentalls, through its innovative publicity, store design and display, contributed to rebuilding London’s postwar fashion cultures in a way that demonstrates the need to incorporate London’s suburbs into future histories of the fashion city.
Notes
1 See case study locations in: C. Breward, Fashioning London: Clothing and the Modern Metropolis (Oxford: Berg, 2004); C. Breward, E. Ehrman, and C. Evans, The London Look: Fashion from Street to Catwalk (London: Yale University Press, 2004).
2 A. De La Haye, ‘Court Dressmaking in Mayfair from the 1890s to the 1920s’, in E. Ehrmanand A. de la Haye (ed.), London Couture 1923–1975: British Luxury (London: V&A, 2015), 11.
3 P. Casadei and D. Gilbert, 2018. ‘Unpicking the fashion city: global perspectives on design, manufacturing and symbolic production in urban formations’, in L. Lazzeretti and M. Vecco (eds.), Creative Industries and Entrepreneurship: Paradigms in Transition from a Global Perspective (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2018), 79–103.
4 Existing research considers the 1940s as a pivotal moment for London fashion, but concentrates disproportionately on the West End. See J. Walford, Forties Fashion (London: Thames and Hudson, 2011).
5 C. Breward, The Hidden Consumer; Masculinities, Fashion and City Life 1860–1914, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999) and E. Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure: Women and the making of London’s West End (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
6 B. Edwards, ‘West End Shopping with Vogue: 1930s Geographies of Metropolitan Consumption’, in J. Benson and L. Ugolini (eds.), Cultures of Selling: Perspectives on Consumption and Society Since 1700 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 34.
7 L. Mellor, Reading the Ruins: Modernism, Bombsites and British Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1.
8 A. Calder, The Myth of the Blitz (London: Cape, 1991).
9 The scale of damage is apparent in the level of compensation the garment industry received under the War Damage commodity and business schemes. Draper’s Record, 5 January 1946, 50.
10 ARP Message Form, 18 September 1940 (Westminster City Archives).
11 ARP Message Form, 19 September 1940 (Westminster City Archives).
12 B. Edwards, ‘Shaping the Fashion City: Master Plans and Pipe Dreams in the Post-War West End of London’ in C. Breward and D. Gilbert (eds.), Fashion’s World Cities (London: Berg, 2006), 162.
13 Ministry of Home Security, Bomb Census Survey Records 1940–1945 (London: TNA, HO 192/328-809).
14 A. Plant and R. F. Fowler, Report on Department Store Trading for Trade Year 1949–1952, Analysis by Departments (London: Retail Distributor’s Association, 1950–1954), 13.
15 For example, throughout 1946, Display disparagingly reports on a number of central London stores, complaining ‘the signs of austerity are still present’ and these stores ‘still seem to be at war.’ Display, March 1946, 3 and Display, February 1946, 48. Bentalls coverage contrastingly focuses on excitement and optimism, reporting that ‘Happy holidays begin at Bentalls.’ Display, September 1946, 17.
16 B. Lancaster, The Department Store: A Social History (London: Leicester University Press, 1995), 105.
17 G. Howell, Wartime Fashion: From Haute Couture to Homemade, 1939–1945 (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 118.
18 I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls and Consumption 1939–1955 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 85.
19 Although there had been a clear interwar trend towards mass produced ready-to-wear at the expense of retail bespoke manufacture, the Second World War accelerated this. Between 1935 and 1938 the number of people employed in retail bespoke garment making across the U.K. fell by 47.8 per cent. Board of Trade, Final Report on the Census of Production for 1948 (London: HMSO, 1952), Table 5.
20 B. Bide, ‘More than window dressing: visual merchandising and austerity in London’s West End, 1945–50’, Business History, 60:7 (2018), 983–1003.
21 The decline in London manufacturing can be seen in Board of Trade, Final report on the Census of Production for 1948, Table 5.
22 B. Bide, ‘London Leads the World: The Reinvention of London Fashion in the Aftermath of the Second World War’, Fashion Theory, 24:3 (2020), 349–69.
23 S. Miles, Spaces for Consumption (London: Sage, 2010), 184.
24 M. J. Law, The Experience of Suburban Modernity: How Private Transport Changed Interwar London (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 5.
25 R. Bowdler, ‘Between the Wars: 1914–1940’, in A. Saint (ed.), The London Suburbs (London: Merrell Holberton, 1999), 114.
26 For a fuller historiography of London suburbia, see D. Georgiou ‘Leisure in London's Suburbs, 1880–1939’, The London Journal, 39:3 (2014), 175–86.
27 R. Silverstone, ‘Introduction’, in R. Silverstone (ed.), Visions of Suburbia (London: Routledge, 1997), 1–27; R. MacManus and P. J. Ethington, ‘Suburbs in Transition: New Approaches to Suburban History’, Urban History, 34:2 (2007), 317–37.
28 A. Saint, ‘Introduction: The Quality of the London Suburbs’, in A. Saint (ed.), The London Suburbs (London: Merrell Holberton, 1999), 9.
29 D. Georgiou, ‘The Drab Suburban Streets were Metamorphosed into a Veritable Fairyland’: Spectacle and Festivity in The Ilford Hospital Carnival, 1905–1914’, The London Journal, 39:3 (2014), 227–48; D. Gilbert, ‘The Vicar’s Daughter and the Goddess of Tennis: Cultural Geographies of Sporting Femininity and Bodily Practice in Edwardian Suburbia’, Cultural Geographies, 18:2 (2011), 187–207.
30 Georgiou, ‘The Drab Suburban Streets’, 244.
31 Further examples of work on suburban creativity: T. Flew, M. Gibson, C. Collis and E. Felton, ‘Creative Suburbia: Cultural Research and Suburban Geographies’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 15:2 (2012), 199–203 and D. Gilbert, C. Dwyer, N. Ahmed, L. Cuch Graces and N. Hyacinth, ‘The Hidden Geographies of Religious Creativity: Place-Making and Material Culture in West London Faith Communities,’ Cultural Geographies, 26: (2019): 23–41.
32 Report on Department Store Trading, 9.
33 Lancaster, The Department Store, 13.
34 D. Slater, Consumer Culture & Modernity (Oxford: Polity Press, 1997), 10 and 71.
35 J. Giles, The Parlour and the Suburb: Domestic Identities, Class, Femininity and Modernity (Oxford: Berg, 2004), 42–5.
36 E. Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London’s West End (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
37 Lancaster, The Department Store, 192.
38 R. Bentall, Bentalls, My Store of Memories (London: W. H. Allen, 1974).
39 P. Scott and J. Walker, ‘Advertising, promotion, and the competitive advantage of interwar British department stores’, Economic History Review, 63:4 (2010), 1105–28.
40 The most popular of these offered to furnish a three bedroom home for £100. P. Scott, The Making of the Modern British Home: The Suburban Semi and Family Life Between the Wars, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 156.
41 The only notable damage was an incendiary bomb which destroyed the piano department in August 1940. Bentall, Bentalls, My Store of Memories, 228.
42 Bentall, Bentalls, My Store of Memories, 235–6.
43 Unlabeled Press Clippings Scrapbook, c. 1940–1950 (Farnham: Bentalls Archive).
44 Ibid.
45 ‘Sun Comes to London’ Promotional Campaign Clippings, 1947(Farnham: Bentalls Archive).
46 Unlabeled Press Clippings Scrapbook, c. 1940–1950 (Farnham: Bentalls Archive).
47 ‘We’ve Captured the Sun.’ Display, August 1947, 15.
48 ‘Queen Mary visits to view display of historical costumes’, Bentalls Staff News, June 1951 (Farnham: Bentalls Archive).
49 Interview with Jean Hacker discussing the disorientating experience of the train journey from Raynes Park into Waterloo due to bomb-damaged landscape, changed beyond recognition, 9th November 2016.
50 S. Cowan, ‘The People’s Peace: The Myth of Wartime Unity and Public Consent for Town Planning’, in M. Clapson and P. Larkham (eds.), The Blitz and its Legacy: Wartime Destruction to Post-War Reconstruction (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012) 79.
51 HC Debate, vol. 445, col. 1715, 17 December 1947, in Hansard. <https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/index.html> [accessed 9 September 2015].
52 HC Debate, vol. 443, col. 877, 29 October 1947, in Hansard. <https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/index.html> [accessed 9 September 2015].
53 E, Hicks, E. Uberoi and P. Loft. General election results from 1918 to 2017. <https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8647/> [accessed 5 March 2020].
54 Scott and Walker.
55 Unlabeled Press Clippings Scrapbook, c. 1940–1950 (Farnham: Bentalls Archive).
56 Ibid.
57 Photographs of the ‘Paris is our Inspiration’ Window and Advertising Campaign, 1949 (Farnham: Bentalls Archive).
58 Unlabeled Photograph Album, 1948–1949 (Farnham: Bentalls Archive).
59 ‘Notes on introduction of self-service in fashion departments in the autumn of 1951.’Peter Jones Weekly Notes, 27 November, 1951 (Cookham: The John Lewis Partnership Heritage Centre).
60 The persistent idea that teenage culture only emerged in Britain after 1945 can be traced to M. Abrams, The Teenage Consumer (London: London Press Exchange, 1959). But D. Fowler, The First Teenagers: The Lifestyle of Young Wage Earners in Interwar Britain, (London: Woburn Press, 1995), 93, argues that youth culture actually emerged in the interwar period, during which time youth wages increased dramatically.
61 Display, September 1947, 35.
62 K. Schrum, ‘Oh the Bliss: Fashion and Teenage Girls’, in M. Forman-Brunell and L. Paris (eds.), The Girls’ History and Culture Reader: The Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 136.
63 K. Peiss, ‘Putting on Style’, in M. Forman-Brunell and L. Paris (eds.), The Girls’ History and Culture Reader: The Twentieth Century (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 49.
64 Fowler, The First Teenagers, 98.
65 D. Kynaston, Austerity Britain 1945–51 (London: Bloomsbury, 2008), 363–70.
66 Consider the cultural portrayal of London’s postwar youth in films and books such as Hue and Cry. Dir. Charles Crichton. Ealing Studios. 1947; and Macaulay, R. The World My Wilderness (London: Collins, 1951).
67 Schrum, ‘Oh the Bliss’, 142.
68 Photograph Series ‘A day in the life of a shopgirl’ (Farnham: Bentalls Archive).
69 Fashion features in Bentalls Staff News Bulletin encouraged debate and promoting the importance of personal style and the pleasures of shopping for clothes. This is starkly different to the instructional and didactic tone found in other corporate publications, such as Marks and Spencer’s staff magazine. Bentalls Staff News Bulletin, September 1947 (Farnham: Bentalls Archive).
70 Saint, ‘Introduction’, 22.
71 Photograph of the Miss Junior tent at Bentalls’s Film Garden Party, 1948 (Farnham: Bentalls Archive).
72 Bentalls Staff News Bulletin, March 1949 (Farnham: Bentalls Archive).
73 Bentalls Staff News Bulletin, July 1948(Farnham: Bentalls Archive).
74 British Pathé, ‘Schoolgirl Mannequins, 1949’<https://www.britishpathe.com/video/schoolgirl-mannequins/query/fashion> [accessed 2 February 2020].
75 The thriving genre of film fan magazines—such as Picturegoer—and annuals including Film Parade, were particularly influential disseminators of fashion information to young people at this time.
76 News for Miss Junior newsletter, Spring 1950 (Farnham: Bentalls Archive).
77 Diarist 5474, ‘Diary for 1 December 1948,’ and Diarist 5098 ‘Diary for 13 December 1945’, in Mass Observation Online <http://www.massobservation.amdigital.co.uk> [accessed 6 June 2014].
78 Compare figures showing a ‘slump’ in London stores to figures for Bentalls. See John Lewis Gazette, 14 August 1948 (Cookham: The John Lewis Partnership Heritage Centre) and Bentalls Staff News Bulletin, January 1948, 1 (Farnham: Bentalls Archive).
79 Citations of Bentalls as an example of new ideas and best practice to copy from peak in 1949. See: ‘Bentalls Easter Parade’, Display, May 1949, 20; ‘Report on Lindsay Maid display at Bentalls’, Display, August 1949, 23; and ‘Pryor of Bentalls to take research trip to U.S.A.’, Display, December 1949, 44.
80 It is commonly proposed that the postwar British teenager was a copy of an American invention, imported in to the cultural vacuum left by the end of the war. J. Savage, Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875–1945 (London: Chatto & Windus, 2007), 461.
81 S. Ashmore, ‘“I think they’re all mad:” Shopping in Swinging London’, in C. Breward, D. Gilbert and J. Lister (eds.), Swinging Sixties (London: V&A, 2006), 58–79.
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Bethan Bide
Dr Bethan Bide is a lecturer in Design and Cultural Theory at the University of Leeds. She is a fashion historian specializing in twentieth century Ready-To-Wear, with a particular interest in the relationships between the production and consumption of everyday fashions. Bethan was awarded her PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2017 and holds degrees from the University of Cambridge and the London College of Fashion. Bethan previously worked as a lecturer at Middlesex University and as a production coordinator and producer of comedy programmes for BBC Radio 4.