Once the bastion of middle-class ladies going up to town to shop, with deferential and attentive staff and a respectable place to lunch, department stores were a world away from today's shopping habits of e-commerce, fast fashion and middle aisles filled with snorkels, ladders and tapestry kits. In the early 1900s, London had more than 100 - each offering a huge range of goods. Here are just some of the capital's behemoths of the time, now gone from the streets and all but gone from the memory.
Bourne & Hollingsworth, 1894-1983 If in 1969 one wanted to "go gay Mexican" as one advert put it, a remarkable garment called "poncho pyjamas" became available at Bourne & Hollingsworth on Oxford Street. The promotion continued: "Forget about sleeping in them. These are for girls who are wide awake to the trendiest fashions.
Wear them for lazy evenings at home - or get-up-and-go to a party in them." The brushed acrylic outfit, with a cowl neckline, flared trousers and bobble trim, was available in pink, blue, royal, green, red or white and retailed for £6 12s. 6d.
In today's money, allowing for inflation, that's just over £100. Bourne & Hollingsworth also had a staff hostel for unmarried females on Gower Street, where presumably shop wages were insufficient to clad every resident in poncho pyjamas, no matter how much they wanted to go gay Mexican. One hostel resident remembered: "I first worked in the ladies' suit department and remember selling a suit to the actress Billie Whitelaw .
