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