BILL LANCASTER IS A SOCIAL HISTORIAN, author, and reader of London Review of Books. “Are You Being Served?” is a recent contribution of his to the LRB Letters column, October 24, 2024, and prompts me to share the following tidbits.
Clik here to view.
The Passing of “High Street Titans.” Lancaster writes: “Like Rosemary Hill, I too miss Fenwick’s store on Bond Street and lament the passing of so many ‘high street titans’ (LRB, 26 September). In the early 1990s when I was researching the rise of modern retail I set myself the task of working out which had been the first department store. My friend and fellow social historian John Walton was at the same time on a quest to discover the first fish and chip shop. We both narrowed the search to two possibilities. John found a shop in the East End which opened at the same time as one in the North, and I turned up Kendal, Milne & Faulkner in Manchester and Bainbridge’s in Newcastle, both of which opened in 1838.”
“Proto-Department Stores. “Both,” Lancaster recounts, “were what I called ‘proto-department stores’ in that they had four or more separate categories of goods and deployed the revolutionary innovation of clearly marked prices.”
Stuffy Places. “But they were rather stuffy places,” Lancaster says. “Female customers were met at the door and chaperoned by a male floorwalker. It was difficult in these circumstances to enjoy the shopping experience and browsing was discouraged: Gordon Selfridge recalled being told to ‘ ’op it’ by a floor manager when he tried to wander round a well-known London establishment during a research visit.”
Aristide Boucicaut’s Bon Marché. Also in 1838, a Paris novelty shop called Le Bon Marché (“The Good Deal”) started selling lace, ribbons, buttons, and the like. “Then in 1852,” SimanaitisSays recounted, “along came Aristide Boucicaut, sort of a 19th-century Parisian Jeff Bezos.” According to Wikipedia, it was Boucicaut who “changed the marketing plan, instituting fixed prices and guarantees that allowed exchanges and refunds, advertising, and a much wider variety of merchandise.”
Clik here to view.
Lancaster continues the tale: “Aristide Boucicaut’s Bon Marché made the real breakthrough in the development of the grands magasins by emulating the 1855 Exposition Universelle, where getting lost among the crowds while being visually bombarded by the clearly priced, dramatically displayed items provided an exciting new experience.… No matter if you didn’t buy anything: you were sure to see something that would excite a new desire and inspire a return visit.”
The Dreaded Lower Class. Lancaster observes, “British store owners were horrified by this new retail form, afraid that the lower classes might come through the doors and unwilling to lose control over the customer (no doubt the floorwalkers were also worried about losing their commission).”
New Ideas, including The Wizard of Oz’s Frank Baum’s Contribution. Lancaster says, “The new ideas weren’t adopted until the young Fenwick brothers returned to Newcastle from an internship in Paris and transformed the family’s dress shop on Northumberland Street into Britain’s first venue dedicated to ‘democratic luxury.’ Selfridge’s opened on Oxford Street a few years later, contributing to the evolution of the department store with the introduction of dramatic, artistic window displays, an idea borrowed from Frank Baum, the author of The Wizard of Oz, with his glass store on State Street in Chicago.”
Clik here to view.
Added Sleuthing. Which, of course, encouraged me to sleuth out more information on Baum’s window dressing: JSTOR Daily offers “Grand Illusions” where Adrienne Raphael writes, “By the time L. Frank Baum introduced the world to Dorothy and the gang, he’d already made his name as a shop window dresser par excellence.”
Clik here to view.
Image from the cover of The Shop Window, by L. Frank Baum, January 1, 1898; Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University via JSTOR Daily.
Baum’s Bizarre. Raphael writes that in 1888, the polymath Baum “founded Baum’s Bazaar, a dry goods store modeled on Woolworth’s, which Baum had revered growing up. An enormous plate-glass window dominated the Bazaar’s storefront, not just displaying the toys, bicycles, and candlesticks inside, but offering a show unto itself. Children flocked to the store to ogle the dazzlingly stacked wares. Tantalizing customers was only the beginning: Baum’s best illusions were still to come.”
Clik here to view.
Image from The Shop Window via JSTOR Daily.
Books About Window Decorating, And More.… “For Baum,” Raphael writes, “window displays were an extension of his writing: a dramatic, glamorous, unbelievable, entrancing way to tell an entertaining story. Beloved as Baum’s decorating book may have been by the cognoscenti, it was the second title he published that year which brought him worldwide fame. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is every bit as much a theatrical production as Baum’s greatest window displays. It’s also a multipurpose symbol—ripe for a variety of interpretations.”
What fun to have an LRB Letter initiate such an interesting journey. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024