The New Cool Shopgirls: The True Story of Life Behind the Counter

In the spring of 1971 on a busy Saturday afternoon,

a successful store owner named Barbara Hulanicki

dragged her husband out shopping.

They came to a West London antiques market.

While they were shopping, the imaginable happened -

a bomb exploded in their hip boutique, Biba.

EXPLOSION

The explosion ripped apart Biba's stockroom, injuring a guard.

The bombers were called the Angry Brigade,

a radical underground group

dedicated to destroying the establishment.

They had already attacked politicians,

judges and even the Miss World contest.

And now they settled on a different target -

the shopgirl.

But why?

The answer came in a written statement from

the Angry Brigade,

in which they set out their rationale for the bombing.

"All the salesgirls in the flash boutiques

"are made to dress the same and have the same make-up.

"In fashion, as in everything else,

"capitalism can only go backwards.

"They've nowhere to go - they're dead."

And, of course, it was grossly unfair to single out

the shopgirl for such a vicious attack,

but it also shows just how prominent she'd become by the early 1970s.

And I want to understand how that happened.

How did the image of the shopgirl

transform so dramatically from suburban, chain-store worker

of the inter-war years to one with such a high public profile?

This is the story of how shopgirls grew in status

in the second half of the 20th century,

with some even becoming the new cool.

It's the tale of shopgirls turned war heroines...

They were, we think, about 60 or 70 families living underneath

Oxford Street during the war.

..of boutique shopgirls who embodied the brand...

She took me to the office and they measured me

and they said I was an absolutely perfect size.

..and the influence of Britain's most famous grocer's daughter -

Margaret Thatcher.

For the first 18 years of my life,

I lived over the shop which my father owned and ran.

LOW DRONING

EXPLOSION

I think shopgirls are among the unsung heroines

of the Second World War.

For them, it became a patriotic duty

to keep the country's stores up and running,

even in the midst of the Blitz.

As millions of people fled to the safety of the countryside,

many brave shopworkers carried on travelling into city centres,

like here on Oxford Street, to open up shop.

In doing so, they were sending out a strong signal -

it was business as usual.

Shopgirls were the backbone of the city centre workforce.

Here are some assistants in Bourne & Hollingsworth,

a department store in London.

-I'll definitely have that one.

-Thank you, madam.

Assistants like these, all over the country,

were taught how to prepare for Hitler's attacks.

They were trained in first aid,

how to evacuate buildings and put out fires.

-FILM NARRATION:

-'Miss Smith arrives.

'She has received training from the local authorities,

'which you too can receive.

'Note how Miss Smith keeps as near the floor as possible and plays

'a jet of water on the heart of the fire to get it under control.

'Now the spray has done its work, the bomb is almost out,

'Miss Smith finishes off the job.'

This shows

some shopgirls undergoing their air-raid precaution training.

They're putting a fire out in an armchair in the middle of Wembley.

This is another group of shopgirls.

So it was something that was happening

right the way across the country.

And what's this one?

That one?

This one is much closer to home.

This shows some of the staff.

They've been told that there was a threat of a gas attack,

so they'd had to put on their gas masks and go up onto the roof.

Gas masks and tin hats, all part of shop work.

Absolutely.

They've still got rather nice court shoes on underneath.

Yes, well, I suppose you have to have a little bit of glamour,

as well as the fetching headgear that you're expected to wear.

You don't often think of shop work as war work.

Why was it war work?

What these women were doing was being expected to help out

in ways that they'd never tried before.

They might have been having to help with the shelters,

perhaps provide the food, or dress the beds, or something like that.

They might even have helped laying the sandbags

around the outside of the shop.

It really does change your view of women's war work, I think,

to think that these are shop assistants,

they're doing something very extraordinary.

Some of them were putting in an additional six or eight hours

after they'd put in a full day's work,

so they were working extremely hard

to make sure that everything stayed as normal as it possibly could.

Did stores like John Lewis have their own air-raid shelters?

There were lots of air-raid shelters around on Oxford Street,

and there were rooms which could house up to 200 people.

And sometimes even people who had been bombed out

were allowed to stay there permanently.

So there were, we think, about 60 or 70 families living underneath

Oxford Street during the war.

It was part of a shopgirl's job to look after the homeless

living in the basements of department stores -

a job which could turn into a matter of life and death,

as it did the night John Lewis was attacked.

This is a copy of The Gazette,

which is the staff magazine for John Lewis,

and it's a copy from 19th October, 1940,

just about a month after the store was bombed.

And in here, there's a fascinating letter written by

a Miss Katherine Austin, who was a member of staff at the time.

And this is her on her retirement, some years later.

She's describing the terrible events of that night,

the night of the bombing.

"I wasn't actually on the Watch that Tuesday night..."

And instead she was "'mothering' the evacuees

"and had been for the previous ten days.

"We were all, bar the Watch, in bed by 10:45,

"but were awakened about 12 by the first direct hit".

RUMBLING EXPLOSIONS

She panics, jumps out of bed.

She's running along to a second room where people are sleeping

to try and get them out.

"Just as I got there, the second bomb fell somewhere in front of me.

"I had one moment of sheer panic." Just one moment!

"I could have sworn that the walls in front were going to collapse

"and that the ceiling would then come down on us all."

And this is interesting.

She says it was a curious feeling, in a moment of calm.

"It was a curious feeling: it was not so much seen as felt -

"as though someone had put far too much into a cardboard hat-box

"and you knew it must give way.

"However, the awful moment passed and I went on."

Which was tremendous.

EXPLOSIONS RUMBLE IN BACKGROUND

She manages to get them out of the building, onto Oxford Street.

They go to a shelter, crunching on broken glass,

shattered glass, down the street

to Lilley & Skinner's, the shoe shop,

"who very kindly opened their shelter especially for us".

Well, Katherine Austin showed true grit.

She probably wouldn't have thought of herself as particularly heroic,

but she was, and her calmness

and her presence of mind that night saved lives.

When dawn broke, Miss Austin was horrified at what she saw.

Much of Oxford Street, including John Lewis -

the shop she had worked in most of her life - was in ruins.

This was the store the morning after it was bombed.

Got some really powerful photographs here of John Lewis

soon after the bombing.

The building's still on fire - what's left of it, anyway.

You can see the fireman putting out the flames there.

But, just a few days, weeks later,

the shop was up and running.

Here are the guys from the warehouse sorting through the fabrics,

getting things back to the shop floor.

Look at this damage in the background here.

Shopgirls brushing out fabrics, salvaging what they can,

broken glass all around them.

I LOVE this one.

Smiling, hair curled up,

brushing down the gowns and the dresses

ready for the next night out.

What really comes across in these photographs

is the staff determination to do everything they could

to keep their store up and running. It's true Blitz spirit.

This is Central London, but it was a similar story in bomb-damaged

cities up and down the country.

Shop staff setting up temporary stores,

customers carrying on regardless.

Everyone determined that they wouldn't be beaten by the bombs.

John Lewis wasn't the only store on Oxford Street

to be destroyed that night.

Just here, Selfridges was also hit, badly damaged.

Two other major department stores, now both closed down,

were also ablaze that night.

One, it's just here -

Peter Robinson, a household name, is now NikeTown.

And just coming up to the old Bourne & Hollingsworth building,

also bombed that night, another much-loved store.

And it's now a Plaza.

In just one night of the Blitz,

all the hard work and dedication of generations

was left lying in ruins.

By 1940, over 1½ million men had been conscripted

and staff numbers in shops plummeted.

Then, in December, 1941, the Government introduced a measure

that would change shop work and change women's lives forever.

For the first time in British history,

women were conscripted into a war effort.

Under the National Service Act,

all single women aged between

20 and 30 were liable to be called up.

They supported the war effort in all kinds of ways -

at sea as Wrens, on the land as Land Girls,

and on the factory floor in munitions.

But all this left retailers with a big problem.

Many of those conscripted were shopgirls,

so who was going to run the shop floor?

The answer?

The very young, the old and, above all, married women.

Until now, most professions had expected or even forced women

to leave their jobs when they got married,

but in a time of national need,

these conventions were set to change.

The Museum of London Docklands in Canary Wharf

houses the Sainsbury's archive.

It's very revealing about married women being hired

and even promoted.

This is a remarkable letter and it comes from Mr RJS -

that's Robert Sainsbury, one of the directors of the firm -

and it's written in 1942 to a Mrs Shephard, a married woman,

and he wants her to apply for a managerial position -

so quite remarkable in itself.

The whole things rests on whether

women like Mrs Shephard are mobile -

are they able to move to another branch -

because of their family commitments.

At the end of the letter, he says,

"We realise that a large proportion of our female staff

"undertake domestic duties as well as their work with us."

He's tying himself in a bit of a knot,

because he wants these women workers to step up,

he's not sure if they're able to,

given their domestic responsibilities.

He's desperate for them to do so.

You can just feel this is very uncharted territory.

This is a lovely piece.

This is an advert taken out by Sainsbury's in the papers

to basically reassure customers

that even though women managers are in place,

everything's going to be fine, you can still shop there in comfort.

And it takes the form of a conversation between

a male manager and a male customer,

and they're talking about the men of Sainsbury's going off to war.

And the manager's saying,

"The girls who take their place? Very good indeed, sir.

"Yes, they feel they're doing their bit here.

"A good many are housewives themselves

"and they know all about war-time shopping.

"It's a matter of give and take or, as we say, 'Grin and Share it.'"

'Professor Penny Summerfield explains just how ground-breaking

'this move to hire married women really was.'

Penny, before the war, women tended to leave work

-when they got married, is that right?

-Yes, it is.

And in some occupations and industries

there was actually a formal marriage bar.

So teachers had to leave in most areas when they married.

And it was the practice in an awful lot of places.

And how did shopkeepers cope with this labour shortage?

Well, initially, I think they went for the young school leavers.

School leaving age in the '40s was 14.

And then, as things got tighter,

they went for the older married woman,

especially after the state had introduced

direction into part-time work.

That's such a familiar idea today,

and so many women organise their lives in that way,

but was this the first time that part-time work

had been structured in that way?

It was its recognition that was so new.

And did shopkeepers take on married women,

mothers, willingly or with a heavy heart?

Well, it was... For all employers, it was a new thing.

They hadn't liked having older women,

they certainly hadn't liked having mothers,

they seemed like much too much trouble.

Employers of all sorts thought that married women would take time off.

But, by the end of the war, employers, including shopkeepers,

were quite pleased with their older married women.

Did married women enjoy working in the war?

Well, various surveys showed that they really liked two things -

one was the money and the other was the company.

They're working mothers,

what happened to the children?

Well, during World War II,

the state did actually create wartime nurseries.

So hang on, hang on.

The state sets up state-funded childcare in the war

to allow married women to work?

Yes, that's correct.

Wartime nurseries were open to the children of all working mothers,

whatever their line of war work.

-VOICE-OVER:

-'The problem for many a patriotic young woman

'eager to do her part in war work is

'who will look after her children while she is at the factory?

'That problem is solved by the creche.

'Mrs Hare leaves her small daughter in kind and safe hands

'while she goes to clock in on her job.'

'Win Hudson started working in the lighting department

'at Peter Jones in West London in the middle of the war.

'She was 30 years old with three children.'

So, would you drop the children off at the nursery

-or at school before you went to work?

-Yeah.

And pick them up on the way home,

or did someone else pick them up?

-Yes, yes.

-So they were there for the whole day?

-Yes.

Did a lot of mothers get into shop work during the war?

-Oh, yes. Mostly because you needed the money.

-Yes.

-Army pay was so small really, what you had to manage on.

-Yeah.

I mean, it really became almost impossible.

Do you think they picked shop work

because it fitted in with their time, or what was the attraction?

Well, yes, really the time and, you see,

some of them couldn't do the factory work that they had, you know,

which so many of them went into.

Was the store mainly run by women during the war?

Yeah, there were men managers,

but during the war they were nearly all women managers,

-and the buyers, and that.

-Yeah.

And then it gradually changed over, the men came.

-As the men came back?

-Back.

-They had their jobs back again.

-Yes.

-After the war, did they keep those management jobs?

-No. No.

Do you have a sense of how those women felt

when they had to give up those jobs after the war?

Well, they kept most, those that want to,

but a lot of them wanted to leave because their husband had come home

or, you know... A lot of them wanted to leave

-but there was still quite a few of us left, you know.

-Yes.

A lot of people think working mothers are somehow a new thing,

-but clearly not.

-No, no.

So, the shopgirl had finally grown up.

She was now a shopwoman, and often a multi-tasking mum.

But employers were quick to emphasise that working mothers

were only a temporary solution.

As soon as the war was over,

they'd go straight back to where they belonged -

home and family.

-VOICE-OVER:

-'Now, these same women are going back

'to make a home for their demobilised men.

'After five years of working to this tune, there's no escaping it.'

MUSIC: "March: Calling All Workers" by Eric Coates

In 1944, the Government passed

the Reinstatement in Civil Employment Act,

allowing ex-servicemen and women the right to return to their old jobs.

In Woolworths alone, there were 335 women working as managers.

Their jobs would now be under threat.

I'm coming to see Paul Seaton, a former manager at Woolworths,

to find out what happened to these so-called manageresses

when the men returned.

-Hello, Paul.

-Hello, Pam, nice to meet you. Do come in.

-Thank you.

Paul owns the most extensive collection of Woolworths archive

in the country.

He even has his own pic'n'mix stall.

What happened after the war in Woolworths -

did women keep their jobs?

Only a very few managers kept their jobs.

People in the Forces

were all promised that they could

have their original store back,

which was the law. A lot of people who'd been serving in the Forces

desperately wanted the comfort of going back to the team of people

that they'd been working with.

How did the directors of Woolworths manage this transition,

this return of the men from the war?

There was a little worry in the board about how the women

were going to feel about stepping down from the job.

And, you see in the minutes of the company, that they went to quite

considerable lengths to try and make sure that everybody was happy.

But there was absolutely no evidence of anyone making a fuss.

Not one letter to the office complaining about it.

So, more than 300 of them, without a fuss,

just relinquished the job and went back to filling the counters,

or supervising, or working in the office, whatever they'd done before.

So, Paul, we've talked about the women who did give up

their managerial positions during the war.

Did any hang onto them?

Yes, there were a handful.

This is the mugshot book from the company's 50th birthday.

You have to go 300 pages in before you find a woman in there.

-And this is her?

-This is her. That's right.

-That's amazing.

Miss Froome, who managed the branch at Manor Park.

So she was quite a legendary figure. You also see why she's legendary

because she's in a sea of male faces.

This annual report gives a picture of how the company perceives itself.

It shows you how many people work in an average Woolworths store.

It sort of gives the message to anybody

thinking of pursuing a career.

So, the manager is portrayed as a man.

-Four men in suits.

-Assistant manager's a man. Yeah.

Two more floormen, and then all of the other menial tasks,

so people putting stock away in the stock room,

all the staff on the sales floor,

and even the ancillary staff behind the scenes, all portrayed as women.

It's really fascinating, isn't it? And that picture says it all.

MUSIC: "Mr Sandman" by The Chordettes

# Mr Sandman.. #

By the early 1950s,

the British economy was getting back into its stride.

The number of female shop assistants had increased by nearly 40%

since the 1930s,

and women in retail were now three-quarters of a million strong.

They included a new generation of shopgirls.

Madeleine Jupp was one of them.

She started on the shop floor at 18.

When did you start working at Bourne & Hollingsworth?

The first year I started at Bourne and Hollingsworth is in 1950,

and that's the young lady that went to work there.

And had you worked in a shop before?

I had, yes.

In Peter Robinson's in Oxford Circus, which no longer exists.

When I first went to Peter Robinson's to work,

I had to spend three months not serving a customer,

and I had to learn the correct way, you know, to sell.

What was the key to selling?

The key to selling was obviously to make the customer feel

that we'd got a very good stock, a very good choice,

and we didn't push them, and we wanted them to go out of the shop

feeling as though they want to come back and shop again.

-Will you show this lady some cardigans, please?

-Certainly.

-What colour would you like, madam?

-Have you any in powder blue?

-Yes.

Because I wanted the customer to return, you know, to me.

I wouldn't have a job if it wasn't for the customer.

And then I went to Bourne & Hollingsworth

and I did become assistant manageress in the restaurant.

How was life in the store in the '50s?

Oh, it was.. I mean, they were quite strict in some respects.

We dressed in black.

And you could wear a white collar or you could wear pearls.

We were treated like young ladies, and behaved like young ladies.

What's this photo?

This photo is the staff outing, which we had once a year

to a seaside resort,

and there's all the shopgirls in there.

It was taken in 1951, so it was the first staff outing I went on.

Was it a happy place to work? Did the shopgirls enjoy it?

Oh, yes. We all were all very happy.

We talked about women who'd been involved in war work

going back to the home, but how about their daughters,

people like you, the new generation coming up?

Were they happy to slot back into that old world?

Not necessarily, no.

I think we sort of felt there's a big wide world out there,

and we wanted to sort of enjoy it really

after the worries we had during the war.

There was that freedom now, after five years of peace,

to go and explore, and sort of be a modern young lady, really.

Of course, after the war, you had the new look came in,

the new fashions, and we were all eager to embrace that.

It was a sort of different generation,

and we left the pre-war years behind.

Yes, it was a sort of buoyant time.

Everybody was sort of feeling great relief and it was...

People were so nice to each other.

So, you know, it was a lovely period, I think, really.

Had shopgirls' ambitions changed after the war?

It wasn't like possibly pre-war where a woman got married

and that was it, sort of thing.

She didn't have ambitions to necessarily go on from there,

which, of course, our generation did.

That happened a long time ago. We've got it all cleared up now.

I found Madeleine's story so interesting

because it seemed to me to really capture the spirit of the times.

On the one hand, she was attracted by the formality

and the traditions of a store like Bourne & Hollingsworth,

with its rules and regulations and its sense of order,

and on the other hand, she and her fellow shopgirls

were really open to change and ready to move with the times.

And the times were changing fast.

The post-war baby boom created a massive demographic shift,

producing record numbers of teenagers.

These teenagers were hugely influenced by American culture,

particularly in music, fashion and film.

And their mothers were gradually getting a taste

for another American export - self-service.

The UK's self-service experiment had started in a Co-op grocery store

in Romford during the war.

But it didn't really take off for another decade.

Co-op opened its first fully self-service store in 1948.

Within three years, there were 600 of them.

Now, it's the most natural thing in the world today -

come to the supermarket, scan the freestanding shelves,

choose what you want - but back then it was revolutionary.

Take something like tea.

This would have been blended for you behind the counter,

it would have been bagged up and weighed by a shopgirl.

Here, you just pick it up, help yourself.

The same with biscuits.

They would have been served from a jar, perhaps from the counter.

Here they are, pre-packaged, brightly coloured, straight in.

Everything about these stores

was custom-made for the new self-service.

Florescent lighting to make sure everything was well lit,

signage so the customers could navigate their way around the store.

Free-standing fridges, so people could help themselves

to fresh produce.

Of course, the checkout, again, not having to wait at a counter.

Even the wire basket that's so familiar to us today,

but it was specially invented for self-service.

It was transparent, you could see through it,

all your goods were on display, it's meant to stop shoplifting.

-FILM VOICE-OVER:

-'You're given a wire basket as you go in,

'and that's to put the groceries in.

'From then on, the customer is more or less on her own,

'free to choose whatever she wants.

'These shelves with the goods on are called gondolas -

'nobody seems to know why.

'There's an assistant to see that each gondola is kept stocked.'

Penny, why did self-service take so long

to get off the ground in Britain?

I think there were a number of reasons.

Obviously, food rationing, there wasn't enough product around,

merchandise to get into the shops, just wasn't there.

I think there was resistance.

I don't think those who shopped, particularly the middle classes,

were particularly keen on having to go and do the work themselves,

they were used to being looked after.

Used to being served.

Used to being served, absolutely, and helped and guided...

I can imagine some people really holding out for the old ways.

We know stories, in the early Sainsbury's, of ladies going in

and throwing their wire baskets at people in disgust

because they wanted the service.

So, what changed?

That whole consumer culture thing

that builds in the American '20s and '30s underpins this.

And we get it in the '50s.

And I think we're resistant at first,

but we grab it wholeheartedly.

Did it have an edge of glamour because it came from America?

I think it had a huge edge of glamour.

I mean that whole Americanisation of British culture in the '50s,

whether it be Hollywood film, pulp novels, supermarkets,

it all goes together.

What do the stores do to win people over to the new practice?

The goods themselves became very seductive.

Gradually, the idea of the sort of the package

and the brand on the package comes into being.

The colours of the bright, primary colours.

Hugely bright. Absolutely, yeah.

It's a very simple psychology.

You know, be bright and visible and people will buy me.

And could you say that the packaging is, in a way,

a substitute for the shopgirl?

The packaging is absolutely the substitute for the shopgirl.

What did she do?

She puts things into bags, that's not necessary,

it's already packaged.

Kept it hygienic, so the packaging does that.

And it tells you that it's good quality.

She would tell you that before, now the package tells you that as well.

So it does it all, yes, it is the substitute.

And a lot of manufacturers were very alert to the fact

that women consumers no longer have this sort of external advice,

and some of them brought in sort of fictional characters.

In the States, for example, Betty Crocker was very well known.

She was the very sensible housewife who knew how to cook

and therefore you took advice from her,

but she's only a brand, she's fictional.

MUSIC: "All Shook Up" by Elvis Presley

# Well, bless my soul What's wrong with me?

# I'm itching like a man... #

By the '50s, girls were leaving school at 15.

They were better educated and expected more out of life.

Many flocked to London in search of adventure.

500 young women a week were taking their chances in the capital.

They often picked up work as shopgirls to support themselves.

-VOICE-OVER:

-'Perhaps there's more money to be made in London,

'but is this the main reason why they come?

'We put that question to a number of girls.

'The first one we asked works in a big shop in Kensington.

'Her name is Eileen Nixon.'

'Ever since I left school I wanted to leave home and Birmingham,

'and I thought that London would be a bigger and happier place,

'full of entertainment and a bigger variety of life

'and more amusement.'

I've been here since I was 15 and, well, I'm very happy.

I'm coming to see writer Diana Melly,

who moved to London from Essex at the age of 14.

DOORBELL RINGS

As she tried to make it as a model,

Diana worked part-time as a shopgirl in a traditional haberdashery,

on Oxford Street, called Jacks.

It was a small shop next door to the tube station,

Oxford Circus tube station,

and it was on four floors.

And to begin with, I worked on the ground floor

where they sold haberdashery, stockings, gloves.

And then I was moved down to the basement, where we sold dresses.

I made friends with the woman who was the window-dresser -

a woman, she was also... I think she was 15 or 16,

and she was the sort of most Bohemian one,

she was allowed to wear trousers.

Once a week when the new stock came in,

one of us would be chosen to go up and try on the sweaters,

and we would be stood on a table and the owner would then

-run his hands up our legs.

-Eugh!

I wasn't often chosen, the window-dresser was more likely

to be chosen because she had rather bigger tits.

I think every girl's ambition, if they were as flat-chested as me,

was to have a blow-up bra.

I don't think they exist any more either.

THEY LAUGH

Did she just know she had to put up with that?

Yeah, one had to put up with it, because it wasn't....

It wasn't that easy to get a job.

And if you objected you'd have got the sack.

And the window displays were extraordinary in those days,

because what you weren't allowed to see in the window

was a naked plastic model, you know, with her breasts and everything.

And so when she was dressing the window,

she had to do it after the shop was closed and the blinds were down,

because you couldn't have these naked models in the window.

Did you enjoy working there?

No, I didn't.

I-II'd had ambitions to be a model,

not just a shopgirl.

And I was always sort of posing and walking into places

like Hardy Amies, you know, never got past the receptionist.

This is me aged 14, nearly 15.

Because in those days you actually had to look 30 and sophisticated.

There wasn't really a teenage look, was there?

-No, that was the look that you aimed at.

-Yes.

MUSIC: "Susie Q" by Dale Hawkins

When Diana was offered the chance to work for a new, hip boutique

she went for it.

The boutique was called Bazaar, started by designer Mary Quant.

Bazaar broke the mould.

Quant created not just a new youth look,

but helped kick-start a new youth culture.

She designed her own clothes and made sure that she hired shopgirls

who looked great wearing them.

Bazaar was on the King's Road in what is now a coffee shop.

So was it this part here?

Yes. Yeah. That's right.

And yes, and it was all just one window

with these fabulous looking models, not real models,

in Mary's clothes, which was so different

to anything we'd seen before.

Goodness.

There's absolutely nothing here to prompt the memory.

And I have a sort of feeling of lounging around in that area.

Apparently, I was usually weeping.

Oh, really? What about?

Somebody said to me once, "I remember Diana when she worked at Bazaar

"and she was always weeping about some bloke."

# ..Oh, say that you'll be true

# Say that you'll be true and never leave me blue

# My Susie Q... #

When did you work at Bazaar?

1958.

I'd lost my Essex accent...

because the customers who came to Bazaar were quite different

from the Jacks customers.

They were richer and maybe kind of more Bohemian.

But posh, posh Bohemia.

Yes.

And I think that Mary Quant wanted the sort of women

working in the shop who would have not been totally out of sync

-with the customers.

-With the customers.

-Yeah.

-Sure.

And what made it so special, would you say?

Before that, all the clothes seemed to be for 50-year-olds,

let alone teenagers or 20-year-olds.

I mean it was just completely different.

What was it like at the time? What kind of reputation did it have?

Well, you certainly knew that if you came to work in Bazaar

you weren't going to be a shopgirl.

What were you going to be?

Well, I'm thinking about that.

You were going to be someone who worked at Bazaar,

something quite different.

Yes. It was fun.

It was kind of a feather in your cap to work at Bazaar.

The King's Road was the place to be and Bazaar was where it was at.

MUSIC: "Susie Q" by Dale Hawkins

By the mid-1960s, London had over 80 boutiques.

It was enough to fill a small guide book like this one.

It's packed full of fascinating things, like little maps

to show you exactly where to find these places

in back streets and back alleys,

and how much money you should expect to spend when you get there.

And, of course, magazines went to town on boutiques -

lots and lots of features,

interviews with owners, that kind of thing.

I've got one here from Rave magazine,

which was a pop magazine of the time,

which explains this kind of new phenomenon of boutiques.

"They are the current 'in' places to buy clothes and accessories.

"People who run them with flair and fashion sense

"know exactly what YOU like to wear and how it should be worn.

"Boutiques are small, interesting friendly places

"where you can browse for hours without anyone bothering you."

And it goes on to say,

"The boutique boom is extending fast across the whole country."

Most shopgirls still worked in traditional independent shops

and the ever-growing chain stores.

But for a lucky few working in boutiques,

being a shopgirl was more than just a job,

it was a status symbol...

particularly if that boutique was Biba.

Biba started in the early 1960s as a mail-order company

run from Barbara Hulanicki's home.

A decade on and three shops later,

it moved here to a seven storey former department store

in Central London, and this was its roof garden.

The roof garden, with its famous flamingos,

was the pinnacle of Barbara Hulanicki's vision for Biba.

Over a decade, she and her husband Fitz

had expanded their original budget boutique

into an enormous lifestyle store,

selling everything from fashion, food to children's wear.

Shopgirls were crucial to Biba's success.

They modelled the clothes, they hung out with the customers,

and lived by Fitz's one golden rule,

never, ever sell hard.

FITZ: The whole idea is

that we are not trying to sell anything to anybody.

We are merely putting things into the store

in the hope that somebody will come along and buy them.

We do not want to be seen to be pushing the customer into anything.

One rule is if anyone ever says "Can I help you?"

they're sacked that second.

Fitz was rather more laid-back

in dealing with his staff's shaky knowledge of their stock.

OK, so the short ones aren't going?

-No?

-Well, sort of.

-What do you mean sort of?

Well, I mean like there's a lot out there,

but some of them are sold as well.

It doesn't make much difference. You see what I mean?

Yeah, only too clearly.

SHE LAUGHS

Delisia Price, seen on the right,

started working at Biba when she was 20.

Also, I think we ought to make a list of all the colours

-that are running low.

-Yes. Yes.

'Today, she's coming back to the roof garden

'to tell me what it was like.'

-Hello.

-Hi.

-Great.

-This is amazing.

-Isn't it beautiful?

It's wonderful, isn't it?

It's so lovely to be back here again.

How much would you say that shopgirls made Biba what it was?

Well, I think they were incredibly important,

because they were on the front line, really.

You know, they were absolutely vital. They were there all the time.

They had incredible influence.

Both Barbara and Fitz were incredible,

I mean they knew everybody, even up until this place,

where there was hundreds of people working here.

They both were incredibly involved and were very, very respectful

and listened to them and treated them as intelligent people,

which they were.

And there were all kinds of staff.

There were very posh girls, very working-class girls -

a huge spectrum.

Is it right that part of the role of the Biba girl

was to befriend the customer, not exactly befriend them

but to be almost like a role model for them?

Well, we... Oh, a role model?

Yeah, or a muse?

Yeah, we were... We were kind of with the customer,

we were just girls.

The people who came in were girls.

There weren't any rules and regulations, you know,

you could talk. I mean we spent hours talking to people.

People used to come in and fall asleep

or bring their dogs or, you know.

So it really was a place to be and a place to hang out?

Oh, it was amazing.

It was a really dark version of a sort of Arab tent.

It was wonderful. I mean everybody used to come in.

Mick Jagger used to come in and sit on the counter

and chat to Fitz and stuff like that.

So talk me through the different roles you had here.

Well, I started off in the shop,

then they kept wanting a size ten to do fittings on,

because Barbara's an incredible perfectionist

and the clothes had to be fitted.

And one day she grabbed me and she said, "You look like right."

She took me to the office and they measured me

and they said I was an absolutely perfect size.

Barbara Hulanicki expected her shopgirls to model her clothes.

Delisia was one of those that particularly embodied

the Biba brand.

Can you put the jacket on again?

'The shape that I think is terrific is very tall

'and square shouldered and a bit flat-chested.

'Unfortunately, there aren't many people like that around.

'But if you start off building on somebody like that

'your clothes will look like that even on chubby people.

'If you want to look hourglass shape you just don't buy our clothes.'

How would you capture the spirit of Biba for, say, you know,

the new generation?

It was just the new generation coming into its own, really.

Delisia's generation of shopgirls enjoyed more freedom

than assistants had ever had before.

In the 1880s, shopgirls at Whiteley's

were forced to follow 176 strict rules.

In the 1970s at Biba, they abided by one rule only,

don't hassle the customer.

But critics of laid-back boutique culture

claimed it allowed owners to take advantage of their staff.

Spare Rib, a new feminist magazine of the time,

warned that shopgirls were being exploited.

Some of the feminists were very critical

of the conditions of work in shops,

and Rosie Boycott, who was the Editor of Spare Rib,

did write a critique of the working conditions of young women

who worked in the boutiques. She exposed,

you know, long hours and low pay

and being sort of bossed about employers and so on,

and did come up with some pretty depressing statistics.

Just looking at the headline on this:

It rather bursts the bubble of the boutiques.

Yes.

The harsh reality.

"Working in the 'trendy' boutiques is boring, badly paid and hard work.

"The boutique owners manage to exploit the market

"by claiming to offer 'exciting jobs', 'groovy music',

"'interesting people', 'cheaper clothes'.

"It all adds up to the ideal job for the Kensington girl

"who doesn't want to sit bashing at a typewriter all day,

"but prefers the idea of being in a boutique."

Is that a bit harsh?

I think she's being honest about the working conditions and the pay,

and that was a pre-occupation of women's liberation.

Pay of 9 or 10 or 20, even 15 or £20 a week

by the mid-'70s was a reasonable wage for a short time.

-What it didn't offer you was anywhere else to go, you know?

-Right.

And of course the hours were long, it was exhausting.

You had to look gorgeous.

But was that one of the problems with boutiques,

that the girls had to look gorgeous?

Yes. But don't forget, most young girls do want to look gorgeous.

But with the economic turmoil of the 1970s,

many boutiques struggled to survive.

Chain stores, though, were growing in size and number

and squeezed out smaller shops of all types.

Then came the mall.

This is Brent Cross Shopping Centre in the Northwest suburbs of London.

It was built on an old dog track and some allotment plots.

When it opened in 1976,

Britain had never seen anything like it.

It was our first stand-alone, out-of-town shopping mall.

It covered an immense 800,000 square feet,

spread over 52 acres, and employed over 4,000 people.

MALE VOICE: 'Once inside, the atmosphere of soft lights,

'marbled floors and fountains

'might lull you into thinking you were in a five-star hotel.

'The organisers quite deliberately set out

'to achieve an upmarket atmosphere to sell their quality goods.'

I have not seen anything like this before.

Do you think you'll like it to shop in though?

Very good. I've just been in Marks. It's very, very nice.

And it'll save us all the journey up the West End.

I think it's one of the best precincts

-and shopping centres I've been in.

-Beautiful.

It must have cost a lot of money.

It certainly must have cost a lot of money but it's well worth it.

Understandably, the shopkeepers and assistants

working in the shadow of Brent Cross

were nervous of their new, super-sized neighbour.

It's very telling that the local traders of the area

couldn't count on the support of their own local MP,

one Margaret Thatcher.

Instead, she embraced Brent Cross and its enterprising spirit.

Quite ironic, given that she was arguably

Britain's most famous shopgirl.

For the first 18 years of my life,

I lived over the shop which my father owned and ran.

I knew full well the tremendous number of hours

which went into earning your keep.

I grew up in Essex in the '80s, heartland of Thatcherism.

I was no fan of her policies, but I was fascinated by her as a woman

as a character, as a politician.

Coming to her home town in Grantham.

So here it is, the shop where Margaret Thatcher grew up.

She was born here in the mid-1920s,

a time when the number of British shops peaks at a million,

many of them like this back then, small family businesses,

the Roberts' grocer's store.

Now it's Living Health, more of a lifestyle store.

So this is the young Margaret's bedroom,

right at the top of the house.

It's now a treatment room.

It's very small, very humble.

There's the view from her window.

A very grand, double-fronted house opposite,

green fields in the distance,

but right between them two MASSIVE supermarkets.

These giant superstores seem the polar opposite

of Margaret Thatcher's cosy family shop.

Today, there are just a third of the number of stores there were

when she lived above the Grantham grocer's.

And despite her being the town's most famous daughter,

there's very little to mark her life here,

although there is a rather curious memorial to her

in the local library and museum.

This is Grantham's greatest tribute to Margaret Thatcher.

It's her childhood bed.

It's surely got to be the one the stranger ways

of marking the life of any former prime minister,

but it's a curiously intimate one.

I do wonder what the effect was of that life in the shop,

in that room on the young Margaret and on her later politics.

You get some sense of it from her autobiography.

"Life 'over the shop' is much more than a phrase.

"It is something which those who have lived it

"know to be quite distinctive.

"For one thing, you are always on duty.

"People would knock at the door at almost any hour of the night

"or weekend if they ran out of bacon, sugar, butter or eggs.

"Everybody knew that we lived by serving the customer.

"It was pointless to complain, so nobody did."

I just think that's so revealing.

Obviously lots of things shaped her politics,

but those early years in the shop taught her

that the power lay with the customer.

She believed in the right-to-buy in the broadest sense -

that the customer should have what they wanted when they wanted it.

And THIS is what many customers wanted,

larger stores with lower prices,

longer trading hours and more car parking.

All made possible by the loosening of Employment and Planning laws,

hallmarks of Thatcherism.

My own home town became a classic example

of the modern-day shopping experience.

As teenagers, my friends and I spent a lot of time hanging out here

on Southend High Street.

We also worked here in its many chain stores,

M&S, Next, Top Shop, Miss Selfridge, WHSmith's.

And I worked round the corner in Sainsbury's.

Big chains like Sainsbury's have seen a massive increase

in their market share since I worked here.

Today, we spend much more than we used to,

but in a much smaller number of larger stores.

Plus we splash out increasingly amounts online.

I was here in the late '80s when this store opened,

I used to work on these checkouts.

The first time any of us had seen bar codes and scanners,

and we all had to be specially trained.

I remember there was a prize for scanner of the week,

for the person who could scan the most goods in the shortest time.

I don't think I ever won that.

Today, retail workers are still the largest group

of private sector workers in the country.

Almost two thirds of them are women.

And over half of them work part-time.

Vanessa, how long have you worked here?

Just over 24 years, 24½ years.

-That's a long time.

-Yeah.

And you've stayed there that long?

I have on and off. When you say "on and off" it's between children.

Yes, of course.

Jeanette, how long have you worked here?

I've worked here 16 years,

took four years out

and I've been back eight years.

And when you took four out was that...

-Looking after my mum, yeah, yeah.

-Looking after your mum, yeah.

So, do you think flexibility's a big part

of the attraction of working here?

Definitely.

Definitely. Because it helps out when you've got family.

You can do things around their school and everything.

It was the main reason for me.

And do you think that's why a lot of people work in

-the big stores like this?

-I do, yeah,

because there's so many of us

they've got that bit more flexibility.

And how do you think shopping's changing today?

It's massively changed.

And you know in terms of online shopping now,

it's a huge business, absolutely huge business.

The clothing as well, you know,

one of the biggest clothing retailers.

People don't have to shop now, you could if you wanted to

sit at home and buy everything, almost everything online.

So, why do people still come to the shops?

Because they'll miss like the chat, you know, the company.

Some people are on their own, they come out at seven,

sit outside the shop waiting for it to open.

Same faces every day because they want to talk.

What about the downsides of shop work?

The pressure.

Yeah, there's a fair amount of pressure to perform, to do well.

Also the stigma that goes with it,

the people that look down on you.

Sometimes it can be really obvious.

Why's it obvious?

Just by the way they look at you or what they expect.

But you sort of shine through that,

you sort of have to go one step above that.

There is a stigma attached to

"Oh, well, it's someone that just works in a shop.

"They haven't done very well for themselves."

Whereas if you was an accountant or something

they think that you're highly educated.

But obviously there is people that are highly educated.

They've been here, they've gone to uni, come back

and gone into a management role cos they've got a degree.

So, what do you like about working here?

I love the customers. I do.

I know it sounds a bit cranky, but I do.

We have such a laugh, it's really good fun.

We all sort of help each other out, don't we? I really like it.

A lot of people might think that shopworkers

don't have a relationship so much with customers now.

Oh, no, you do, you really do.

You've got your regulars and they look out for you.

Even if you're just sitting on a checkout

they'll rather queue and come to a specific person

because they get a relationship and it's really good fun.

And the joy you get when you've served someone

and you've put all your knowledge in place

and then your manager might come down the next day or a week

and say, "Actually, someone come down and said they were really happy

"with your service." Then you think "Yes!"

You know, that's how it makes you feel.

LAUGHTER AND CHATTER

Shops are part of our ordinary, everyday lives

but, if you take a step back, the story of the women who work in them

is extraordinary.

Our shopgirls have been at the forefront of waves

of social change, from Victorian apprentices

to boutique entrepreneurs.

From the first generation of female graduate trainees,

to the first generation of officially recognised working mums.

Over the past 150 years, shopgirls have performed as servants,

specialists, advisors, models, muses and much else.

But what does the future hold for them?

In fashion boutique Start, in London's East End,

the assistants are trialling cutting-edge technology.

Online customers browse a virtual store,

yet can still call on the help of real-life, in-store staff.

If you're not able to come to our store in person

then from your desktop, you can take a virtual tour around the store,

focus in on a particular object

that catches your eye,

and then e-mail us or text us

any questions you have.

So we still have a personal interaction with the customer,

even though you could be thousands of miles away

on the other side of the world.

Through instant messaging, the assistant can send the customer

all the information they need.

These assistants need to be tech savvy,

fashion savvy and customer savvy.

'We are the next generation of shopgirls.

'Basically allow us to extend'

our role further from the shop floor,

so we are able to give the same personal service, expert advice

to customers all over the world,

not just the ones who are able to make it into the shop.

So I think it's just the next step for us really.

It's clear that in the years ahead,

shops and shopping are set to change.

Women workers have done so much

to shape the way we've shopped in the past,

but will stores be able to count on them in the future?

That's partly up to us and what we want as consumers,

but it's also up to women and what they want from life.