CLOTHES SHOPS, DISAPPEARED

 

See Also: ART COLLEGES; CARNABY STREET; CLOTHES DESIGN ASSOCIATED The Fashion & Textile Museum; CLOTHES SHOPS; CLOTHES SHOPS, SPECIALIST; DEPARTMENT STORES, FORMER; MUSEUMS The Victoria & Albert Museum; POP & ROCK; SHOPPING The King's Road Shops; MENU

 

Apple Boutique

Pete Shotton, an intimate childhood friend of Lennon was appointed to run the Apple Boutique. As children they had been so close that they had been called Shennon and Lotton by many. They had remained close. Shotton had contributed to the lyrics of I Am The Walrus. Lennon had received a letter from a pupil at Quarry Bank High School that had told him that an English teacher had been having classes analyse the symbolism in the lyrics of the Beatles songs. He responded by setting out to write a nonsense song. Yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog's eye came from a vile childhood rhyme that he and Shotton had used to recite. It was the latter who proved to be able to recall it. After Lennon became involved Yoko Ono Shotton found that she was trying to treat him like a servant and therefore stopped being around his friend so much.

Location: 94 Baker Street, W1U 6FZ (purple, red)

 

Apple Tailoring

Alan Holston and the tailor Freddie Hornik (1944-2009) encountered one another at The Speakeasy club. In 1966, with Tara Browne (d.1966) and John Crittle (1943-2000), an Australian, they opened Dandie Fashions on The King's Road.

In 1968 the Beatles took a stake in Dandie. The business was renamed Apple Tailoring. Its customers included David Bowie and Jimi Hendrix. Allen Klein insisted that it should be wound up.

Location: 161 The King's Road, SW3 5RP (red, brown)

See Also: THE BEATLES Business, Apple

 

Biba

Barbara Hulanicki had been born in Jerusalem, the daughter of a Polish diplomat. The war prevented the family's return to Poland. Following the re-establishment of peace her father acted as a mediator for the United Nations. He was murdered by an extremist Zionist gang in 1948. As a child she had been dressed simply because of the wartime restrictions. She developed a desire to make beautiful clothes.

Hulanicki trained as a fashion illustrator. In 1961 she met Stephen FitzSimon, an advertising executive. The couple married. In 1963 they set up Biba Postal Boutique, a mail order business that sold clothes that she had designed. Biba was the name of Hulanicki's younger sister. Felicity Green, the fashion editor of the Daily Mirror newspaper, asked her to design an affordable dress. She created a short, pink gingham dress that cost 3. It came in only one size - eight. She received 17,000 orders for it, from which she made d. a dress. The following year the first Biba shop was opened in a former chemists s shop in Abingdon Street, Kensington. On one occasion they ran out of the material that they were using to make a prune-coloured dress that they were selling. The shop's purple curtains were taken down and cannibalised. Hulanicki disliked the way in which Carnaby Street, after its initial flowering, had become tacky. She sought to differentiate the experience of shopping in Biba from doing so in Soho's boutiques. The clothes she created were much more affordable that Mary Quant's designs. She used vintage furnishings for countertops, lit the premises dimly, using hat stands rather than racks and displaying merchandise as though it was being sold in a jumble sale. The sales assistants were the brand personified. They tended to be unhelpful.

At the end of the 1960s Biba took over the former, seven-storey Derry & Toms department store on Kensington High Street. The Biba store became the trendiest shop in London. Kathy McGowan fronted the pop music television show Ready, Steady, Go (1963-6). She wore Biba clothes. The day after the programme aired the shop would often sell out of what she had worn. Hulanicki sold control of the business to a womenswear retailer which was itself taken over by a property company. Subsequently, the brand owned by a series of different parties.

In 1975 Hulanicki and Fitz-Simon fell out with the parent company's board. They left Biba. Subsequently, the brand faded. They moved to Brazil, where they continued to work in the clothes industry. In 2009 Top Shop stocked a clothes collection that Hulanicki had designed. The same year the House of Fraser department store bought the Biba label. In 2014 it was reported that Hulanicki had signed a consultancy deal with House of Fraser.

Location: 87 Abingdon Street, W8 6AW (blue, brown)

113 Kensington High Street, W8 5SQ (orange, grey)

See Also: BEANS Biba Beans; DEPARTMENT STORES, FORMER Barkers

Website: www.vam.ac.uk/articles/biba

 

Blustons

Blustons was a very old-style ladies outfitters. It closed in 2015.

Location: 213 Kentish Town High Road, Kentish Town, NW5 2JU

 

Croalla

Scott Croalla (1955-2019) and Georgina Godley met at Wimbledon School of Art, where he studied conceptual art and she sculpture. They both continued their studies at Brighton Polytechnic. While there they became a couple. The pair returned to London where they became involved in the fashion industry. In 1981 they opened the Croalla shop in Dover Street. It had an opulent interior that included a photomural by Gilbert & George that stated Go To Hell. The clothes that it sold were a reaction to traditional English god taste. They were ornate with a hint of decadence. The style proved to be well-timed as the New Romantic pop movement embraced along with some more established musicians such as Elton John. Scott Croalla tended to be front-of-house and marketing, whereas Godley was the designer. Their working relationship was frequently fractious but proved to be functional. However, in 1985 their personal relationship fractured and she left the business. It went into decline and was closed in 1991.

 

Department Stores

21 Shop

Vanessa Denza established the 21 Shop within Woollands department store. It proved to be highly innovative. The designers whose work sold there included: Marion Foale, Gerald McCann (1931-2019), Jean Muir, Roger Nelson, Sally Tuffin, and Roslaind Yehuda.

Location: Woolland Brothers, 101 Knightsbridge, SW1X 7RN (red, pink)

See Also: DEPARTMENT STORES, FORMER Woollands

Gerald McCann

Gerald McCann studied at the Royal College of Art. He was employed by Marks & Spencer for whom he designed a dress that sold over a million copies. He left the company to work for smaller niche design houses and was associated with the 21 Shop at Woollands. In 1963 he set up his own business in a Notting Hill basement. He soon found success and moved the business to a large 19thC house close to Piccadilly. United States retailers embraced him as a Mod designer. His business partner was his lover Andre Moussoulos. In 1973 McCann shifted his base in New York. In the early 1990s he returned to Britain where he continued to work. In 2012 he moved to Blackpool, which was his home town.

Polly Peck

Raymond Zelker (1915-2011) and his wife founded the Polly Peck fashion brand. They had started out in the rag trade in the East End. Their first premises in the West End were in Regent Street. The nearby Regent Street Polytechnic inspired them to name their business after it, the Peck rhyming with tech . The business created the concept of a shop within a shop . The first one opened in Harrods.

In 1959 the business floated on the Stock Exchange.

In 1979 Asil Nadir acquired a controlling interest in the business.

Location: 37 New Bond Street, W1S 2RU (orange, blue)

Way In

In 1967 the top floor of Harrods was converted into the Way In, a swinging mega-boutique . In part, this was the creation of Anthony Saxton (1934-2015) of the advertising agency Papert Koenig Lois.

Location: 87-135 Brompton Road, Knightsbridge, SW1X 7XL (orange, yellow)

 

The Emperor of Wyoming

Billy Murphy (1940-2014) was a native of the city of Cork. He moved to London and worked as a clothes retailer. He took a position at The Westerner. This was an Americana boutique that was owned by John Michael Ingram.

In 1972 Murphy and his business partner Michael McVeigh opened two Americana boutiques of their own. These were both called The Emperor of Wyoming. The name was derived the opening track on Neil Young's debut solo L.P. (1968). The branch with Murphy was most associated was the World's End one at No. 404 The King's Road.

The Emperor of Wyoming sold high-quality cowboy boots and vintage clothing that was imported from the United States by the bale. Murphy was skilled at displaying items. As a result, the shop was watched by magazine fashion editors. It was visited by rock and pop musicians.

Healthy sales prompted Murphy to transfer the shop eastwards to No. 196 in 1974. However, rising rents prompted him back to World's End. The shop shut in the mid-1980s.

Location: 404 The King's Road, SW10 0LJ (blue, brown)

 

Mr Fish

Mr Fish designed the androgynous garment that Jagger wore for the free concert that the Stones performed in Hyde Park in 1969; reputedly it had been designed for Sammy Davies jr. (1925-1990). Fish also created the kipper tie.

Location: 17 Clifford Street, W1S 3RQ (blue, yellow)

Website: www.collections.vam.ac.uk/item/0139741/tie-mr-fish

 

Foale & Tuffin

Marion Foale and Sally Tuffin were contemporaries first at Walthamstow Art College and then the Royal College of Art. They had a shop off Carnaby Street.

Tuffin & Foale's clothes were stocked by Woollands. Barbara Hulanicki liked them. She went on to found Biba.

Location: 1 Marlborough Court, W1F 7EE (orange, blue)

Website: www.vam.ac.uk/articles/foale-and-tuffin-talk-fashion

 

Mr Freedom

Tommy Roberts (1942-2012) studied on the foundation course at Goldsmiths College of Art. He metamorphosed from being a Trad jazz fan into being a Mod. He ran coffee bars and dealt in American cars. In 1966 he opened his first boutique, Kleptomania, in Kingly Street, next door to the Bag O Nails nightclub. Initially, its stock was retro in character. The likes of Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend, Keith Moon, and Jimmy Page became customers. The designers from whom he commissioned work included Pauline Denyer, Paul Reeves, Paul Smith, and Rae Spencer-Cullen. After a year's trading Roberts embraced the Hippy style.

In partnership with Trevor Myles, he opened Mr Freedom in 1969. They named the shop after a film that William Klein had directed. Its decor and clothes were informed by Pop Art. Roberts managed to secure a license from Walt Disney to reproduce some its characters. He had an anarchic aspect to his character. He liked challenging his customers. He disliked selling things. If they did sell well he hoped that some other retailer would take them on, as was the case with hot pants. He embraced Victoriana. The shop's customers came to include Ian Dury, Jimi Hendrix, Elton John, Malcolm McLaren, Jean Shrimpton, the Rolling Stones, and Twiggy. He influenced designers such as Yves Saint Laurent and Kansai Yamamoto, and Vivienne Westwood. Sir Cecil Beaton was a fan. The artist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was known to wear a Roberts T-shirt that his daughter Paloma had bought for him.

At the end of 1970 Mr Freedom moved to larger premises in Kensington. In basement was a diner Mr Feed Em; every bowl of soup contained a plastic fly. Roberts came to realise that he had overreached himself financially. In 1972 he closed Mr Freedom. He then opened the City Lights Studio boutique above a banana warehouse in Covent Garden. David Bowie and Bryan Ferry bought clothes from it. However, an economic recession caused him to close the shop in 1975. Thereafter, he dealt in antiques and furniture and made a couple of returns to retailing.

Location: Mr Freedom, 20 Kensington Church Street, W8 4EP. The shop included a restaurant. There was a plastic fly in every bowl of soup. (purple, blue)

Kleptomania, 10 Kingly Street, W1B 5PJ (orange, orange)

Mr Freedom, 65 The King's Road, SW3 4NT (red, brown)

Mr Freedom, 430 The King's Road, SW10 0LJ (blue, turquoise)

City Lights Studio, 54 Short's Gardens, WC2H 9AN (red, pink)

 

Cecil Gee

Retailers who worked for Cecil Gee at its No. 39 Shaftesbury Avenue branch included Billy Murphy (1940-2014), who went on to found The Emperor of Wyoming.

Location: 39 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1D 6LA (orange, turquoise)

 

Granny Takes A Trip

John Pearse trained as a tailor on Savile Row. He was also a Mod who frequented the Scene nightclub. In autumn 1965 he, Nigel Waymouth, and Sheila Cohen opened Granny Takes A Trip at No. 488 Kings Road. It was London's first boutique to cater for both men and women. The shop swiftly attracted the rock lite as its customers: the American country rock singer Gram Parsons developed such a liking to it that he took to sleeping on the shop floor; Jimi Hendrix bought from it many of the clothes that he wore when performing. Ms Cohen proved adept with retro clothing; this appealed to the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and The Who.

During 1967 Mr Pearse became uncomfortable with the extent to which fashion was being hippified, the following year he left the business. Before doing so, he sawed his Dodge car in half. This he welded to the shop window. This created the impression that the vehicle was bursting through onto the street.

In 1969 the tailor Freddie Hornik and two New Yorkers acquired a 51% holding in Granny. The following year Waymouth and Cohen decided that they had enough. Hornik took the business in a direction that was inspired by Nudie Cohn the Rodeo Tailor . The new style of clothes appealed to the business's existing customers and newer acts and performers, such Marc Bolan, Queen, Roxy Music, and Rod Stewart. The business opened outlets in New York and Los Angeles. In 1973-4 a number of people associated with the store succumbed to hard drug use and fell out with one another. The shop closed in 1974.

For a while the flat above the shop was occupied by a young advertising copywriter called Salman Rushdie. In part, his rock novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) may have been inspired by the customers beneath his floorboards.

Location: 488 The King's Road, Chelsea, SW10 0LF (blue, pink)

See Also: BEANS Inflation

 

Hung On You

Michael Rainey (1941-2017) went to Eton College. His social circle included Tara Browne and Christopher Gibbs. He opened the Hung On You menswear boutique in Cale Street, Chelsea Green, in 1965. The shop front was painted by Tony Little who would co-found the wallpaper company Osborne & Little. Rainey had had no formal design training. His influences included King Arthur, Spenser's Faerie Queen, and Byron. The clothes were often based on vintage attire initially militaria. He had them made up by an East End tailors. The dandified clothes he sold enabled some people to transition from mod to hippy. His customers included The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Eric Clapton, Terence Stamp, and Pete Townshend. He delighted in the fact that Brian Epstein paid in cash. The Beatles wore his clothes for their 1966 world tour.

In 1966 he married Jane Ormsby-Gore. She worked at Vogue magazine and was renowned for her distinctive style of dress. She would wear second-hand clothes. Her sister Alice became Clapton's fianc e. Jane caused a stir by breastfeeding their baby daughter during the Prince of Wales s investiture.

In 1966 the boutique moved to World's End. Commercially, this proved to be a mistake. By then Rainey had become interested in spiritual matters. In 1969 he sold the business. For a while he travelled with the upper crust hippies who were involved in setting up the Glastonbury Festival. They fell under the influence of Meher Baba. The couple settled in Wales.

Location: 22 Cale Street, SW3 3QU (purple, yellow)

430 The King's Road, SW10 0LJ (blue, turquoise)

 

I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet

I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet was, a 1960s boutique that traded in antique military uniforms as kitsch clothing.

Location: 15 Foubert's Place, W1F 7QB (blue, grey)

65 The King's Road, SW3 4NT (red, brown)

293 Portobello Road, W10 5TD (blue, brown)

 

Kensington High Street

The easternmost section of Kensington High Street used to contain the fashion emporiums Kensington Market on the southern side and Hype Designer Forum on the northern.

Location: 49-53 Kensington High Street, W8 5ED. Kensington Market's premises. (purple, turquoise)

 

Lapelle

In the early 1980s Lapelle was one of a small group of clothes shops to the south of Tower Bridge that sold upmarket designer clothes.

 

John Michael

John (Michael) Ingram (1931-2014) was born into the family that owned Wakeford s, a clothes shop on The King's Road that had a clientele composed of debutantes and their mothers. The 25-year-old opened the first John Michael menswear shop at No. 70 Kings Road. Ingram claimed to have entered the sector uncluttered by knowledge of its conventions. The garments that he sold were influenced by Italian design and were targeted at the young. The Mods were drawn to John Michael. Initially, he designed everything, the clothes, the shops, the packaging, and the graphics. It brought a measure of informality to the decidedly stuffy menswear sector. It sold pink shirts in an era when only wear women wore pink. The style of the clothes was more subdued than those that John Stephens retailed. He incentivised his salesmen by putting them on commission on Saturdays. The shop became popular with actors. Its initial salesmen included the Steven Berkoff.

Ingram opened a second shop on Bond Street and then acquired larger premises on the Kings Road at Nos. 102-104. His customers came to include the Rolling Stones, Patrick McGoohan, Nureyev, and Lord Snowdon.

John Michael had two ranges. A more expensive eponymous one and a cheaper Guy one. His refined style inclined him not to establish a presence on Carnaby Street. Other retail brands that Ingram developed included Guys & Dolls and Westerner. The latter sold Americana. It was the first store to import Levi's jeans into Britain. Sportique was on Old Compton Street. Its clothes were hipper. The shop attracted an artistic clientele that included Francis Bacon, Marc Bolan, Peter Cook, Bob Dylan, and David Hockney. It was where The Beatles bought their polonecks.

American chains imported John Michael clothes in parallel to Mary Quant garments.

In 1965 John Michael floated.

A series of oil price hikes caused the British economy to go into recession. The cost of raw materials surged. The structure of the clothing industry altered. John Michael did not adapt to the changes sufficiently quickly and therefore faltered.

In 1979 Ingram set up Design Intelligence. The business sought to forecast fashion trends.

Ingram mentored a number of other retailers who went on to have substantial success.

In later years Ingram worked as a cashmere agent. He continued to go to his office everyday into his eighties.

Location: 18-19 Savile Row, W1S 3PW. Ingram's offices. (red, pink)

 

Moke

John Rowley (1945-2009) was a Mod in the early 1960s. He drifted into the orbit of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. It was he who furnished the musicians with the 1920s and 1930s jazz records that provided the band with many of their covers. In 1967 he and Mick Oram started selling antique clothes from Granny Takes A Trip's basement on the Kings Road. Subsequently, the pair acquired a stall in Kensington Market. He acquired a Mini Moke and thereafter became known as Johnny Moke.

In 1984 Moke opened Moke at No. 396 The Kings Road. He closed the shop in 2002.

Location: 396 The King's Road, SW10 0LN (blue, yellow)

 

PX

In 1978 Helen Robinson and Steph Raynor opened PX on James Street. Two years later it moved to Endell Street. It sold flouncy clothes that became central to the New Romantic look. The nightclub promoter Steve Strange worked in the shop as an assistant.

Location: 57 Endell Street, WC2H 9AJ (red, orange)

 

Mary Quant

Many of the clothes that Mary Quant wore as a child were hand-me-downs from a cousin. For her degree she wanted to study fashion. However, both of her parents were teachers. To comply with their wishes she followed a course to become an art teacher. At Goldsmiths College she met her future husband Alexander Plunket Greene. Subsequently, their lives gravitated westwards to Chelsea. Mr Plunket Greene started working as a photographer in the district. Through drinking in Finch s pub on the Fulham Road, the couple came to know Archie McNair, a former solicitor. He opened the Fantasie coffee bar at No. 128 The King's Road. The trio pondered ideas for a business in which they might be able to work together.

Plunket Greene and McNair both put in 5000 to buy No. 138a The King's Road. They planned to open a jazz club in the building's basement but were turned down by the local planning authority. Therefore, they opened a restaurant in it instead. This they named Alexander s. The establishment soon developed a fashionable reputation.

The partners decided to open a clothes shop on No.138a's ground floor. This sold both items that were bought in from wholesalers and original garments that Quant designed in her Oakley Street bed-sit. This she did by buying clothes patterns and then adapting them to her own taste. Thereby, she created items that were original. Her style became known as The Look.

In 1955 the trio opened Bazaar, London's first boutique. Customers were given the freedom to examine the clothes as they wished rather than being pestered by sales staff, who were seeking to serve them. Quant's designs included a pair of house pyjamas that were featured in the magazine Harper s Bazaar. The garment was then mass-produced in the United States. It had not been licensed.

Quant found herself to be increasingly dissatisfied with what the garment wholesalers were offering. Therefore, she increased the proportion of her own designs that were sold in the shop. These proved to be popular with the public and so she found herself having to employ increasing numbers of helpers. The partners lack of business knowledge was such that the material that she used to make the clothes was bought retail from Harrods rather than wholesale.

The importance of the Mary Quant team did not lie in their being original designers but rather in their being the first retailers to assemble a package. Without intending to, they invented transient high street fashion retail. Who had made the most knowing purchase became the hallmark of the fashionable rather than the traditional pattern of who could afford to buy their clothes from the couturiers. Plunket Greene was a natural marketer. It was he who coined design names such as Booby Trap, Cheeky, Cherry Pop, Jeepers Peepers, Naughty Nail, and Starkers

In 1960 a precocious young lad joined Mary Quant as a general hand. He massaged his relationship with Quant and Plunket Greene by using his evening job at Ronnie Scott's jazz club to tip them off as to whenever anything notable was happening there. After six months at Bazaar he left, proclaiming that he now knew all that there was to be leant there. He was Andrew Loog Oldham. He went on to turn the Rolling Stones from a West London rhythm and blues band into an international rock act.

The growing success of Quant prompted the sale of Alexander's to its staff in 1960. The following tear the three partners set up Mary Quant Ltd. to provide themselves with a business structure that could cope with a massive growth in the scale of their activities. In 1961 Vidal Sassoon cut Mary Quant's hair into what became an iconic a bob. She appreciated that the hairdresser Vidal Sassoon was using an architectural sensibility to cut hair. She used him to cut models hair for her fashion shows. She did a deal with Butterick patterns, enabled women to make their own Quant-designed clothes. In 1962 the American retailing business J.C. Penney placed a large order with Mary Quant Limited. Ginger Group was set up as a cheaper label.

In 1964 Mary Quant appreciated the proportions for the mini skirt and designed it. She named it after the car.1 Prior to its launch she had been famous international, the garment raised her to superstar status. She was aware that make-up had not changed since before the Second World War. They were hard and lacquered; eye colours and lipsticks were only available in very limited colour ranges. There was no softness or connection to fashion. At art school she had used either a watercolour paintbox or Caran d Ache crayons for her own make-up. She was aware that the fashion models used theatrical make-up that had a broader colour range and that they used brushes to apply it. In 1966 she launched her own range of branded paint box cosmetics.

In 1966 Quant was awarded the O.B.E.. In the 1970 she started devoting time to designing household goods. Her interest in domesticity having been in part prompted by the birth of the couple's son Orlando.

McNair retired in 1988 from Ginger Group, the Quant holding company.2

McNair died in his mid-90s. A week before he died a visitor asked him how he was. Almost extinct was his reply.

Location: Fantasie, 128 The King's Road, SW3 4TR (red, blue)

Finch s, 190 Fulham Road, SW10 9PN (blue, red)

Mary Quant Shop, 138a The King's Road, SW3 4XB (blue, brown)

Mary Quant Colour Shop, 7 Montpelier Street, SW7 1EX. A Mary Quant cosmetics shop. (red, blue)

See Also: CARNABY STREET John Stephen; CATS Working Cats, Restaurant Cat

Website: www.maryquant.co.uk www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/mary-quant

1. In Paris Andr Courreg's (1923-2016) had the same insight and created his own version.

2. In 1971 McNair had bought Thomas Jourdan, an off-the-shelf company. Through it he acquired Corby of Windsor, which owned the patented the Corby trouser press business. An appropriate acquisition for someone who was inclined to dress formally.

 

Elsa Schiaparelli

In 1933 Elsa Schiaparelli had a showroom in Upper Grosvenor Street, Mayfair. She closed this at the start of the Second World, bequeathing her the contact details of her London customers to Sophie Mirman (n e Parmentier) (1912-2008), who had been run the operation s millinery workshop. (Mirman was not to retire until 1991.)

Location: 6 Upper Grosvenor Street, W1K 2LJ (orange, pink)

 

Simpson's

The comic actor John Inman (1935-2007) achieved televisual stardom through playing the camp menswear assistant Mr Humphries in the Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft-written sit.-com. Are You Being Served? (1973-1985). Lloyd had been a salesman at Simpson s, while Inman had worked as a window-dresser at the Regent Street branch of Austin Reed.

Location: Austin Reed, 103-113 Regent Street, W1B 4HL (red, turquoise)

Simpson s, 203-206 Piccadilly, W1J 9HD. Now a large Waterstones bookshop. (purple, blue)

 

The Squire Shop

The Squire Shop was co-owned by Jeff Kwinter and John Simons.

Location: 97 The King's Road, SW3 4PA (blue, turquoise)

 

Stirling Cooper

Stirling Cooper was founded in 1967 by Ronnie Stirling and Jeff Cooper as a womenswear wholesaling business. Two years the business opened a boutique. It also sold menswear that had been designed by Anthony Price, who had just graduated from the Royal College of Art. Mick Jagger took to his work. In 1972 Stirling and Cooper parted ways.

Location: 26 Wigmore Street, W1U 2RL (purple, brown)

 

Top Shop

Burton's acquired the womenswear business Peter Robinson, which had a large store at Oxford Circus. Raymond Burton (1917-2011) decided to develop a business that would attract younger women. This was opened on the top retailing level of the store. Therefore, it was dubbed Top Shop. It sold clothes that were designed by the likes of Mary Quant and Stirling Cooper. In 1970 the first Top Man was opened. Four years later the first standalone Top Shop opened.

Top Shop collapsed in 2020. The following year the brand was acquired by ASOS, an online retailing business.

 

The Village Gate

The Village Gate chain was owned by Jeff Kwinter. It sold clothes that were very fashionable in the late skinhead era when the style was evolving into suedehead.

Location: 131-133 The King's Road, SW3 4PW (blue, purple)

156 The King's Road, SW3 4UT (blue, pink)

72 Old Compton Street, W1D 4UN (orange, yellow)

491 Oxford Street, W1C 1NA (orange, blue)

David Backhouse 2024