Selfridge's, Suffragettes and Fashion

Irenebrination: Notes on Art, Fashion and Style tells us that the innovative shopping experience promised by Selfridge’s was the result of the vision of Gordon Selfridge, originally manager of Marshall Field, Chicago. This American businessman planned to open an American-style emporium in London that could give shoppers a pleas­urable day out as well, presumably, as making a fortune for himself.

Selfridge's Oxford St, London

Foundations for the department store were laid in early 1908 and by 1909 the building opened. Taking up an entire block in Oxford St, the neo-classical columns, impressive entrance and rich decor­at­ion became a veritable temple to shopping. You can see the Queen of Time clock over the entrance, with its classical sculptural programme.

600,00 personal invitations had been sent out in the days before the opening, inviting everyone in Britain to come to see the Selfridge's during its first week. Orchestras played music and masses of flowers filled the interior.

Invitation to the opening

Selfridge wrote a book about retail­ing, entert­ainment and success called The Romance of Commerce; he should have called it the Religion and Politics of Commerce.

Timing was critical. Gordon Selfridge founded his store just as the women's suffrage movement was becoming successful and the London Underground was bring­ing respectable ladies into town. To make shop­ping easier and more pleasant for women, Selfridge opened the first in-house coffee shop, roof top restaurant and ladies bathrooms. It was all designed to make a day of shopping in the city something a respectable lady might thoroughly enjoy.

Selfridge's rooftop restaurant

Gordon Selfridge was an important supporter of the women's movement. He even refused to press charges when a suffragette broke one of the store's enormous plate glass windows. And it is said that Selfridge’s flew the Suffragette flag on its roof! I wonder why he was so supportive. Selfridge said independent women would be his best customers. But it would be interesting to know if Mrs Selfridge was pushing him.
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For their part, suffragettes believed that fashionable, feminine dressing was important. Barbara Caine in Australian Feminism and the British Militant Suff­ragettes wrote Suffrage demonst­rations were very much costumed affairs. Unlike their later counterparts, early C20th feminists regarded fashion as very important. Christabel Pankhurst urged: “Suffragettes must not be dowdy” and urged the women to outfit themselves approp­riately.
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Beautifully groomed suffragettes
Photo credit: US Library of Congress

Every suffrage group developed a close relationship with a particular West End emporium, which fitted them out appropriately. They also published attractive advertising in the pages of their weekly papers. The moderate suffragettes chose as their stores Derry and Thom, or Swan and Edgar, or Burberry, shops that provided sen­sible coats and skirts, silk blouses and serv­iceable overcoats at moderate prices. This was the kind of outfit that, as the advertisements sug­gested, allowed for comfortable move­ment. The more militant suffragettes chose the classier Selfridges which offered a far more elegant array of clothes.

Selfridges ad­vertised regularly in the suffragette paper Votes for Women, featured the suffragette purple, white and green in its win­d­ows, and offered many different designs in white with delicate stripes of suffragette colours to wear to demonstrations. Selfridges garments usually chosen by suffragettes were not the rugged brown outdoor coats and skirts, but rather delicate white tea gowns, of a kind normally worn indoors. The white garments emphasised the physical fragility of women.

Derry and Toms advertising, directed at suffragette demonstrators

Sally Feldman in The New Humanist wrote that for the Suffragettes, the department stores rep­res­ented both opportunity and limitation. While some more radical women disapproved of the trivial pleasures they offered, they also held meetings in the shops and even used them to distribute their own propaganda. When hordes of militant women rampaged through the West End shattering shop windows in March 1912, it was a manifestation of this ambiv­al­en­ce. The Suffragettes recognised themselves as con­sum­ers and partly accepted retailers' claims that shopping was a female form of eman­ci­p­ation. But now they were demanding more fundamental rights, so they broke retailers' windows to encourage them to become their advocates and vote against the government.
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Swan and Edgar advertising, suggesting that movement ribbons could be added to their clothes