Shop Girl

by Mary Portas

  Part of me didn’t want to leave back windows and move onto another display team. But I knew it was time for me to do more so I applied for a senior dresser’s job when it came up on the fourth floor. Its two biggest departments back then were Sports and Way In, and why someone had thought fit to house trainers, sports tops and balls on the Olympic Way on one side of the floor, and Harrods’s younger more accessible fashion brands at Way In on the other was beyond me.

  But while I wasn’t interested in folding football shirts, I knew that Paul Falvey, the display manager, who looked like David Essex in cowboy boots, wasn’t that interested in fashion. I applied for the job, got it and started off doing some sports display but quickly moved to working solely on Way In. Paul seemed as pleased as I was that he wouldn’t have to cross the floor from sports to fashion.

  My first task was to charm the head buyer, Barbara Deighton, a dynamic woman in her forties who oversaw Way In. She not only selected all the fashion but sold it, too, on the shop floor, and while her two assistant buyers, Judy and Geraldine, were into trends, Barbara favoured a classic look – perfect blonde blow-dry, immaculate make-up and skirt suits worn with court shoes. If she didn’t like what I did, I’d never get anywhere.

  I knew I could do a lot if I got the chance. Way In was full of younger, hipper brands but their display didn’t reflect that. British designers like Ally Capellino, Betty Jackson, Sarah Dallas and Paul Howie hung on the rails alongside French Connection and international labels, including Jousse, Ciao and Michiko. It was innovative fashion at the lower end of the price range, and while classic designers needed classic display, I could see an opportunity at Way In to do something different.

  As I headed into the Basil Street Wine Bar for my twenty-first birthday party, I knew I’d have to win Barbara over if I was to succeed. But I felt sure I could as I walked in on Graham’s arm doused in a bottle of Chanel No 5 that he’d given me. Graham was a grown-up. He went to Belgium for business meetings, took me for Mai Thais at Coconut Grove in Mayfair and asked me on nights out with his clients. He was strong, capable and caring. He made me feel safe and we’d fallen quickly and easily in love.

  But after almost a year at Harrods, I wanted my working life to change too. For now I had store displays to do for Way In – plinths, internal windows and cases around the department. What I hoped for, though, was a dedicated Way In window on the ground floor. It had never had one before. But I was determined to get Way In its own window. And Barbara was the key.

  The Emmanuels

  Tish and I have bought matching bubble skirts, are obsessed with ‘Vienna’ by Ultravox, ‘Fade to Grey’ by Visage, and I am on my first proper holiday abroad.

  I’ve only ever been to France a couple of times for the weekend but Joe, Tish and Phil, Michael and Ros, Graham and I have caught the coach to a campsite in the South of France. We wanted Lawrence to come with us, too, but he’s left the police and is working in Our Price so he couldn’t get the time off. He’d enjoyed being a cadet but training for real had finally made him realize that the police force wasn’t for him. He’d left Hendon, and although he wasn’t sure what he’d do now, we were all relieved that at least he wasn’t doing something he didn’t enjoy.

  And so the seven of us bake on the beach by day before sweltering in our tents at night. We drink red wine, eat cheese and I am still so obsessed with volumizing my hair that I’ve managed to take out all the lights on the campsite when Tish and I plugged in our hairdryers simultaneously.

  ‘Quick, Mary, quick!’ Tish shrieks, on a hot July morning a couple of hours after we started sunbathing. ‘We’re going to miss it!’

  The sun beats down as we run across the campsite in our bikinis towards a bar. It’s already stuffed with British people drinking pints as Tish and I push our way inside.

  ‘We’re never going to see a thing!’ Tish cries, as we crane to see the TV that’s sitting in a corner.

  But we manage to get near enough to see a glass coach stopping at the bottom of the steps leading to St Paul’s Cathedral. I watch as Diana Spencer begins to unfurl herself from inside. There is only one thing I want to see: the dress by Elizabeth and David Emmanuel. Unknowns until the future queen picked them to design for her.

  Bit by bit, the dress is revealed. I can see frills, puffed sleeves and a veil as Diana and the dress emerge from the coach. It is a panoply of pearls, a sea of taffeta with a train that stretches for miles. It is a dress fit for a soon-to-be-princess. It is also really creased.

  Berge must be having a stroke.

  Love Hearts and tartan

  Barbara Deighton might have been strict but she was also fair. I knuckled down, while she watched over me and learned that she could trust me. I filled the display areas with designs I knew she would like, constantly came up with ideas for new ways to showcase products, and we were soon united in our belief that Way In should get a dedicated ground-floor window.

  Barbara recognized that it would only increase our profile and was a force to be reckoned with once she’d made up her mind. Not only was Barbara a head buyer and close to Berge, she was also married to the head buyer of men’s accessories. Together they packed a punch when it came to persuading Mr McKittrick. We were soon allocated two windows at either side of a door on Hans Crescent, which had previously housed menswear. It wasn’t Brompton Road but I couldn’t ask for miracles.

  But as Barbara and I had sat down to discuss the first display that I would design for the windows, I knew it was time to misbehave a little.

  ‘We’re thinking of an Arctic tundra,’ she said. ‘Pastel blue cashmere and grey silk in a snowy landscape. Something eye-catching but elegant.’

  I sketched the window, got the design signed off by Mr McKittrick and set to work. I wasn’t going to let anyone see that window until it was perfect, and I roped Ted and all the boys into making me props before heaving them into the windows.

  ‘What’s all this lot going to look like, then?’ Ted asked, as his face went beetroot red with the effort. ‘It’s not the usual kind of thing they do ’ere, is it?’

  Eventually the display was finished, I lifted the blinds and brought Barbara downstairs to see it. The mannequins were dressed in the cashmere and silk that she had requested but they weren’t standing on an Arctic plain. Instead they were strutting down the streets of snowy New York. Lorry tyres were piled up in the corners of the window, there were black tyre tracks skidding through white snow and a row of mannequins’ legs in tights just as I’d seen them do at Boy on the King’s Road. The New York skyline twinkled behind it all on a backdrop I’d painted.

  Barbara gazed at the window for a long time, then smiled. ‘It’s good,’ she said. ‘Very good.’

  It was all the encouragement I needed. Soon those windows were full of everything from ripped tartan and thousands of Love Heart sweets that I stuck individually on the walls to bald mannequins wearing only sportswear and boxing gloves.

  Joseph pumps

  ‘How much did your shoes cost?’ Mr McKittrick’s secretary Jane asks me. ‘Go and find something you want from the shoe department and I’ll ask him to sign it off as a replacement.’

  Someone had nicked my shoes when I took them off to get inside a window. They were nothing special. But I’m desperate for a pair of pale turquoise Joseph flats with a black wedge sole that I saw in the shoe department a week ago. The leather is like butter. They’re unlike any shoes I’ve ever owned and probably never will. Working with fashion every day has only increased my appetite for it but I still survive on buying damaged stock at knock-down prices in the sales. I’ve bought a white Dunhill men’s shirt, an Étienne Aigner leather jacket and a skin-tight Pucci dress.

  But despite being promoted, my wage is still so low that I struggle all the time. Joe does my hair for free and I continually beg the beauty girls for samples. I buy cheap food and go to happy hours in bars. But money is a constant worry and I even got caught recently dodging fares on the Underground. Graham went
mad and warned me that I could get a criminal record. I hadn’t been prosecuted and he had paid my fine. Despite working hard, it frustrated me that money was always short.

  My stolen shoes probably cost a tenner or something.

  ‘They were seventy quid,’ I say to Jane.

  Soon I’ve slipped the Joseph pumps onto my feet.

  Buffalo hat

  Two things happened in quick succession when I’d been working at Way In for nearly a year. First I competed in Harrods’ Good Housekeeping Awards – an annual battle of the display teams across all the store’s departments about who could dress theirs the best – and won. I wasn’t sure but I thought Berge might almost have cracked a smile when my name was announced. Soon after, Caroline handed in her notice at Harrods because she was going to work as an interior designer. It felt like the end of an era.

  Elaine and Roger both applied for Caroline’s job as display manager and Elaine should have got it, in the normal scheme of things. She and Roger were both talented and hard-working but Elaine was senior to Roger. The job was rightfully hers. But he was given the promotion and the women at the store were up in arms.

  ‘It’s so unfair!’ they exclaimed, over coffees in the Arco. ‘Now that Caroline’s left, there’s not one display manager who’s a woman. It’s all blokes. Look at us working like morons. We’ll never get promoted.’

  It was true. Roger was a great friend and I didn’t begrudge him a promotion, but it was clear that the male Mafia at Harrods wasn’t going to let women get ahead easily. After talking about it, Danielle, Fiona and I went to our union representative to complain about sex discrimination.

  The next day a senior manager took me to one side. ‘You’re doing well, Mary,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want you to get involved in this and put your chances of promotion at risk.’

  Within twenty-four hours, I’d joined about a dozen female Harrods employees who marched up and down on the pavement outside the store in protest. The head of personnel came down to try to persuade us to stop but we had union rights. Then the manager tried another tack and said that I no longer had to report to Paul Falvey: I could officially be in charge of the Way In display and windows. I still didn’t shut up but our protest wasn’t enough. The union failed to address the problem, most women at the store were too scared of making any fuss to join us and Roger moved up the ladder.

  By now, Way In was full of activity, hosting a big launch of a new Mary Quant make-up line, for which I’d piled paint pots and brushes in a window I’d painted purple, and a fashion show. Even as Britain went to war in the Falklands, the luxury world of Harrods kept forging ahead, like an ocean liner unaffected by choppy currents. A catwalk was put up across the department floor, and in a flurry of choreography, hair and make-up, dressing models and making sure the music was right, I sent everyone down the catwalk. Barbara was cool and collected and I worked to show her that I could be, too – for almost the first time in my life. It was a great opportunity and I took charge of the look of the show, dressing the models identically to the mannequins in store. As customers watched them come down the catwalk in next season’s fashions, it was as if the mannequins had come to life.

  But, even so, Caroline’s departure and the fiasco over her successor had left me and other people wondering about the future. Soon Fiona had also resigned and started freelancing as a window dresser. Coming home from work, I’d find her making props at the kitchen table and chatting about what she’d done that day.

  Everything was changing and I envied Fiona’s freedom and the fact that she was making her own way in the world, away from a company where opportunities to move upwards seemed limited. But I still wasn’t sure if this was enough to make me want to leave the safety of Harrods. Having known extreme financial insecurity, I was terrified of it, and although I didn’t earn much, I at least had a regular wage. I decided to stick to what I knew and make a bit extra on the side selling bric-à-brac at markets with Fiona on the weekends.

  But one day I was inside a Way In window touching up a display when there was a knock on the glass. This wasn’t an infrequent occurrence and I usually turned to find some bloke with his crotch squidged against the window. I ignored it. But the person on the other side of the glass wouldn’t give up and I eventually turned around.

  It was only Malcolm bloody McLaren. He was standing on the pavement in a big overcoat and a Buffalo hat, gesturing at me to come outside. I climbed out of the window and went over to him.

  ‘I’ve been watching your windows,’ he said, in a distinctive drawl. ‘Pretty out there, aren’t they? I’m surprised Harrods lets you get away with it.’

  ‘Friends in high places,’ I said, and he smiled at me.

  ‘What do you do with your props when you’re finished with them? I’ve got a shop in World’s End. I need props. Here’s my card. Tell them I sent you.’

  He gave me his card before walking away. A few days later I visited his store and sold the manager a couple of props that I’d bought from Harrods because they were no longer needed. As I got on the train back to Sudbury Hill, I realized that everyone was moving on and I’d be left behind if I didn’t, too. Malcolm had got me thinking. He always was good at stirring things up.

  Spitfire

  Fiona stands beside me, staring at the window. ‘It’s good,’ she says.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Your first day as a freelance. We’ve got to celebrate!’

  We’re standing outside Pinto’s on the King’s Road. I’ve just dressed one of its windows after leaving Harrods. I tested the water about finding new work while I was still there by asking around for some extra. The Sheraton Park Tower Hotel had paid me thirty-seven pounds and a free cocktail every week to dress their retail display cases. A guy from Harrods who’d gone to work at Piccadilly Sports had asked me to help out on their display, and I’d got thirty pounds for the few hours it took to do each week. But Way In had given me a taste for fashion that I didn’t want to give up so I’d gone into Pinto’s to ask if they needed help. When they agreed to employ me freelance to do their display, I knew the time had come to make the break from Harrods.

  I needed transport, though, if I was going to move around London from shop to shop with props and kit. Graham had added to the small amount of money I had saved and I’d been sensible: I’d bought a bright orange Spitfire that was so tiny I was permanently driving around with mannequins’ legs sticking out of the passenger window.

  Fiona and I cross the road and get into the car. It’s a hot summer’s evening and we wind down the windows.

  ‘So, are we going to celebrate?’ Fiona asks.

  ‘I think we should.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Corks.’

  ‘That wine bar in South Kensington?’

  ‘Yeh. Graham said he’d meet me there. I spent ten minutes in a phone box earlier, trying to get through to him at work to arrange it, and there’s no way of letting him know if we want to go somewhere else.’

  ‘That’s fine. Let’s go there.’

  I switch on the radio. ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’ by the Police is playing. Fiona smiles at me.

  ‘That’s about right,’ she says, with a giggle.

  I turn to her. ‘Did you really like the window?’

  ‘Yes, Mary! Now, will you shut up? I know it’s scary going out on your own but we’re going to be fine. This is just the beginning.’

  We smile slowly at each other. Then we start to laugh. Pulling out of the parking space, I turn up the stereo and start to drive along the King’s Road.

  Acknowledgements

  Michael, Tish, Joe and Lawrence for opening up your hearts. Megan for holding my hand in your caring and talented one. And to my family: Melanie, Mylo, Verity and Horatio. What more could this Shopgirl want? I love you.

  Index

  The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the ind
ex, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.

  Adam and the Ants 249

  Aggie and May 28, 43, 60

  Aigner, Étienne 256

  Aladdin Sane 85–86

  Alan (at Bosch) 176–77

  Albert (Cathy’s brother) 33

  Aldrin, Buzz 45, 46

  Ali, Muhammad 247

  Alma, Sister 79, 99

  ‘Anarchy in the UK’ 123

  Andersson, Benny 123

  Andrew (at Harrods) 241

  Andrew (at Harvey Nichols) 195–98, 205, 209

  Angel Delight 95, 171

  Angela, Sister 80–81, 116–17

  Anne French cleansing milk 108

  Apollo 11 45–46

  Aramis 167

  Arco café 223, 257

  Armani 216

  Armstrong, Neil 45

  Arthur and Gladys 107

  Atari 230

  Atkins, Ian 245

  Atrixo hand cream 147

  Attard, Lorraine 65, 109, 110, 128

  Austin Reed 12–13, 38, 200

  brogues 13

  Aztec bars 91, 92

  BaByliss hot brush 124

  Baileys 238

  ‘Baker Street’ 157

  Barnes, Linda 65, 77, 78

  Barrie, Amanda 79

  Basil Street Wine Bar 252

  Bates, Simon 236

  The Beatles 57

  Beaton, Cecil 196

  Beavis, Doug 27–28

  Beckett, Samuel, Waiting for Godot 181–82

  Behan, Brendan 158

  Belfast 21, 57

  Falls Road 12

  Berge (at Harrods) 218–19, 226, 239–44, 250, 254, 257

  Bergman, Ingrid 246

  Bernadette 165, 176

  Best, George 56, 246

  Betty, Aunty see Flynn, Elizabeth

  Bic biro 27, 83

  Big Bertha 247–49

  ‘Big Hack’ 16–17, 18

  Big Henry 43