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. He swept away previous shopkeepers\u2019 customs of keeping shopper and merchandise apart to one where \u201cjust looking\u201d 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 \u201cpleasures of shopping\u201d to those of \u201csight-seeing\u201d. He installed the largest plate glass windows in the world \u2013 and created, behind them, the most sumptuous shop window displays. His adverts pointedly made clear that the \u201cwhole British public\u201d would be welcome \u2013 \u201cno cards of admission are required\u201d. Recognising that his female customers offered profitable opportunities that competitors were neglecting, one of his quietly revolutionary moves was the introduction of a ladies\u2019 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\u2019s biographers even thinks he \u201ccould justifiably claim to have helped emancipate women.\u201d
Producer: Ben Crighton\nEditors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon
(Images: Selfridges Christmas shop window, Credit: Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images)