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00:00this London department store holds some incredible secrets and the unique story
00:15of a man who rose from rags to riches to take the American dream across the Atlantic
00:22Harry Gordon Selfridge was the maverick that shook up British society
00:30he knew what the customer wanted and gave it to them in style
00:37transforming ordinary shopping into an extraordinary adventure
00:43he was a genius from nine till five a fool at the weekend
00:50this is the true story of Selfridge's department store and the visionary American who built it
01:03on London's world-famous Oxford Street one building stands imperious above the rest
01:20this is Selfridges
01:30founded in 1909 over a century it has become an icon of the capital I can't imagine Oxford Street without
01:39Selfridges Selfridges is an institution a neo-classical gem
01:45twice voted best department store in the world it holds 13 acres of retail space spread over six floors a
01:56huge food hall nine restaurants and three stories of women's fashion
02:04selfridges has an entire department dedicated solely to tailor-made denim
02:12it boasts Europe's largest designer shoe gallery and the aptly named wonder room stocks only the most luxurious brand
02:23the modern store is a commercial success story in 2012 it posted profits of 200 million dollars
02:36but Selfridges significance goes far beyond commercial success it has an astonishing hidden history
02:47it has an astonishing hidden history the store helped change British society liberating women shattering class divisions and reinventing shopping
02:54Selfridges is is the department store that shook up old Britain and at its heart is an enigma founder and inspiration Harry Gordon Selfridge
03:13Selfridge the American outsider who came to be known as the Earl of Oxford Street
03:21this man gave Britain energy and he gave us excitement for shopping and he bought this American can-do approach
03:31until recently this retail genius and irrepressible personality had been almost forgotten
03:37now through private documents family archives and expert interviews
03:44Selfridges story has been pieced together once again
03:47his biographer Lindy Woodhead has been at the forefront of his rediscovery
03:55Harry Selfridge himself is little known in America and I was talking to an historian at the Chicago Institute about this and I asked her why there was a
04:06little written about Harry in America and she said oh well my dear probably because he left us and she said well is there much written about him in London
04:13and I said no and she said well why is that I said probably because he was an American so now we confuse the two together and Harry's come home
04:25it seems Selfridge's destiny was shaped by his childhood
04:36a totally self-made man he was molded and motivated by severe hardship
04:44adversity within the family will always mold a child sometimes they won't be able to cope with it and other times it makes them much stronger
04:52Harry Gordon Selfridge was born in 1856 into a poor family in rural Wisconsin
04:58Harry Selfridge was an only child so he grew up with his mother who had been deserted by her husband
05:08Robert Selfridge had left to fight for the Union forces in the Civil War
05:13he survived but chose never to return to his family as a result Harry became extremely close to his mother
05:24what he knew as a child was that he was going to have to help support his mother
05:30it made him very protective and it made him protective of women
05:34selfridge grew up ambitious to improve his circumstances and escape from poverty
05:42soon the bright lights of Chicago were calling
05:46in 1879 Selfridge landed a job at the city's newest department store, Marshall Fields
05:52Chicago was the frontier town of late 19th century America. People were really free with
06:05their money and they were spending money to show that they'd made it and Marshall Fields
06:09was the shop that was catering to those wild tastes. It was at Marshall Fields that Harry
06:15Selfridge nurtured his talent for retail. He started off as a stock room boy apparently at Marshall
06:24Fields and he worked his way up and that's where he started to innovate with advertising, promotion,
06:32architecture. Selfridge blazed a trail through the ranks. Marshall Fields became the most popular
06:41store in Chicago thanks in no small part to Harry's bright ideas. He introduced this kind
06:48of catchphrase which said only so many days until Christmas. That's still used today you know that
06:54kind of you've only got so many days to buy your Christmas presents. That was him. Within eight
06:59years Selfridge was the store's general manager and a well-known face. But by 1901 he'd been at
07:07Marshall Fields for more than 20 years. His career progression in Chicago had run its course.
07:15He was feeling frustrated about his inability to sort of rule things and to run things and to innovate
07:22without any restriction. Selfridge was essentially ambitious, impulsive, a showman.
07:30Selfridge dreamed of opening a grand store of his own.
07:33Work trips had previously taken him to London and the glamour of the old world had turned his head.
07:42London really was the centre of the world. It was at the heart still of an empire that spanned the globe.
07:47It was enormously important for manufacturing, for industry, for finance, for fashion. You know,
07:53practically every sphere London dominated. But there was one commercial sphere where London lagged behind.
08:00department stores. The gap in the market was giving Harry Selfridge ideas.
08:09He was obviously looking at the retail market and there were some amazing new shops being built
08:14in Paris which were described as cathedrals of shopping. And those didn't exist yet in London.
08:19Selfridge was able to provide something that London was actively missing.
08:22Selfridge was decided. He would realise his vision for a department store in London.
08:35Today, the site Selfridge chose for his store makes perfect sense.
08:40Oxford Street is one of the busiest shopping streets in the world.
08:42But it wasn't always like this. In 1905, the street was an undesirable backwater.
08:54So when Harry Selfridge chose to build here, he was taking a major risk.
09:00He was going way over to the west end of Oxford Street in an area which lacked very large stores.
09:08So this was quite a doubting thing to do.
09:12To its advantage, the site was directly opposite the newly opened underground train station, Bond Street.
09:21One of the great developments of the early 20th century, late 19th century was the rise of public transport.
09:26It meant that people could come from further out of London into work in London.
09:31And it meant that women could travel more easily and more independently.
09:35And Selfridge was very, very conscious of that.
09:40Archives reveal Harry Selfridge tried to have the station renamed as Selfridges,
09:44and build a tunnel to it from his store.
09:49And his plans for the store's architecture were no less ambitious.
09:53He commissioned a series of elaborate designs.
09:55These submitted drafts were recently unearthed at the Royal Institute of British Architects.
10:06His initial drawings looked more like the White House or St Paul's Cathedral,
10:10and had a huge dome in the middle.
10:14Unfortunately for Selfridge, the authorities in London didn't appreciate his grand designs.
10:20When the elevations were presented to the planning office at Marylebone Council,
10:26they said, well, we're very sorry, Mr Selfridge, I'm afraid you can't have six stories and a mansard roof.
10:33Why not? Because you'll be taller than St Paul's.
10:36So they had to be ripped up, and they had to be redone.
10:40For one of the only times in his life, Selfridge scaled back his plans, and they were finally approved.
10:46As Selfridge waited for the construction to be completed, he set about promoting his store,
10:54using the all-American innovation of advertising.
10:58Nothing like Selfridge's bold, illustrated ads had ever been seen in Britain before.
11:05These are all part of Selfridge's fantastic campaign to launch the store.
11:10So they were out in the newspapers, in the press.
11:12This poster from the launch campaign, shopping at Selfridge's, a pleasure, a pastime and a recreation.
11:19It has a picture of a woman and a man, quite a seductive couple.
11:25It hints at all sorts of possible encounters in the shopping world.
11:31And there's somebody actually at the back, and I've never noticed her before.
11:34And she's, I think, taken off her pince-nez to have a good look at this couple having tea here.
11:40And maybe Selfridge was trying to make a kind of gentle, coded invitation to people meeting indiscreetly.
11:50Before the store was even finished, Selfridge spent the equivalent of $2 million on advertising.
11:56It was an unprecedented media blitz.
11:59And the message to London was clear.
12:02Selfridge's would offer a whole new experience.
12:14Modern shopping is based entirely around the concept of unlimited browsing.
12:19Customers are free to look around the store as they please.
12:24But in London, this was not always the case.
12:28In the early 1900s, browsing was rare and difficult.
12:33The way shops worked in London at the beginning of the 20th century was that
12:37you couldn't look until you found something that you wanted.
12:39You had to go in knowing what you wanted.
12:44Hidden away in the upmarket district of Mayfair, some traditional London stores still remain.
12:51The Piccadilly Arcade has been here since 1909, the same year that Selfridge's was founded.
12:57Its shop's style of service remains almost untouched.
13:02Good afternoon. I'm Mr Rowley from Budd, and we're an old-fashioned haberdasher.
13:06We've been here since 1910, and we sell shirts, pyjamas, nightwear, but we specialise in socks.
13:14The socks are stored away behind a counter.
13:17You don't look through them yourself. You are served instead.
13:22Gentlemen get quite passionate about their socks, and it's very important that they're served properly.
13:27If a customer comes in to us and requires socks, there's many questions we need to ask
13:32to ascertain what it is that he wants.
13:34We ask him what particular length he would require, as in short, medium or long, and what material the sock's made of.
13:41So we do many different fabrics and many different colours and many different sizes.
13:45It's quite important for a gentleman to come in to us, not to affect any sensitivities of the ladies by showing some leg.
13:53So what we like to do is to advise him to have the longer sock, which goes right to the knee.
14:00So it's a little bit of an odd sort of conundrum about what size you are, and we find a gentleman needs to be served,
14:06and to lead through the maze of sock sizes, because it's quite difficult to get the correct one.
14:11In 1900s London, not only could you not look at goods yourself, there was heavy pressure to buy.
14:22Just looking was simply not acceptable.
14:26You didn't want a person who you were paying wages to being tied up for long periods,
14:32so the policy was developed to weed out people who weren't going to buy.
14:38Inside department stores, the ominously named Floor Walker stalked the aisles.
14:45The Floor Walker was there to deal with potential time wasters.
14:50And in 1900s London, that included anyone browsing, as Selfridge himself was to find out.
14:58When he'd first come to London, he'd gone into a store, and the Floor Walker had said,
15:06is sir going to buy anything? And Harry Selfridge said, no, no, no, I'm just looking.
15:11So he said, well, off it then, mate. He was just, you know, a thug dressed in a morning suit.
15:18The ordeal left Selfridge determined to offer Londoners the freedom to shop.
15:23At his store, there would be no Floor Walkers and no pressure to buy.
15:28You could come and browse at your leisure.
15:32Here, for example, it's saying, this is an invitation to the whole British public,
15:39to and to visitors from overseas. No cards of admission are required, and all are welcome.
15:46That the pleasures of shopping, as well as those of sightseeing, begin from the opening hour.
15:52In March 1909, opening day arrived.
16:05Selfridge's doors opened to surging crowds.
16:08During the launch week, one and a quarter million people visited the store. So that was absolutely huge.
16:17From a city of four million people, one in four Londoners came to have a look.
16:21They were astonished by what they saw.
16:25It was just huge. It kind of dwarfed everything else on Oxford Street at the time.
16:29From a scale point of view, it's almost incomparable with anything else other than an institutional building.
16:37It's architecturally magnificent. It's so solid.
16:42Once inside, the impact was even greater.
16:46To this day, the Selfridge's shopping environment remains one of the store's calling cards.
16:50When it first opened, it was a revelation.
16:56There were open vistas, fresh flowers, musicians playing, and scent in the air.
17:03And at last, goods were out to see and touch, stacked high in every colour.
17:09Selfridge called his store an Aladdin's cave.
17:12He took goods out from behind glass cabinet doors and arranged them in displays so people could touch them.
17:20He wanted everything to be tactile and he felt that it should be an experience that you would participate in.
17:28There were hair salons, art galleries, restaurants, and a concierge to book you train or theatre tickets.
17:35Selfridge's must have been a complete shock to the average British customer.
17:40It was almost a social centre. In fact, Selfridge's saw it as a social centre as much as a shop.
17:47He knew how to capture his people's attention in a very delightful way.
17:52It was about delighting his audience.
17:55It was an audience. It wasn't just about sales. It was about the theatre, the spectacle.
18:01For London, shopping as a pastime was born.
18:07And for its women in particular, it meant freedom.
18:18In Edwardian Britain, it was generally considered improper for a lady to go out without an escort.
18:24But department stores provided a new, respectable destination.
18:30Upper-class women in the early 20th century would have to be chaperoned wherever they went.
18:35However, the big department stores at this time really started to change that.
18:40They became a space that women could go to and could feel safe being out in public on their own or with another female friend, potentially.
18:47Shopping for the first time becomes a real kind of leisure activity.
18:51Selfridge's offering was particularly liberating for women in a very practical sense.
18:57The matron of a respectable household starts to feel that actually maybe it's okay to go out.
19:04As long as there's somewhere I can go where if I need to go to the toilet, I can.
19:10Or, you know, you couldn't do that previously.
19:12Amazingly, Selfridge's was the first store to provide women's toilets.
19:19Up until this point, if you needed to go, you had to go home.
19:24You can't just, like, nip off to the toilet.
19:26It kind of becomes a real ordeal.
19:28And Selfridge was one of the first public space that had ladies' restrooms that women could use.
19:33So it really was about creating an atmosphere that women felt comfortable in.
19:37At last, a lady could happily spend the day shopping, which was definitely to Selfridge's advantage.
19:47Because a well-dressed Edwardian lady needed a vast range of clothes and accessories.
19:54The avenues for department stores making money are really numerous.
19:58Getting dressed in the Edwardian period was a very costly business indeed.
20:03Women were changing their outfits sort of up to three times a day.
20:07Now, we've got one petticoat here on our mannequin.
20:09But depending on the particular style that was in fashion,
20:13women could have worn up to maybe seven or eight different layers of petticoats.
20:18At this time, no clothes were pre-made.
20:21A lady would choose fabrics and the store would make the dress to order.
20:24You've got all of this lace, these amazing lace trimmings, which again, you can really see,
20:31it really is sort of conspicuous consumption.
20:33All of this lace would have been made by hand.
20:36So you can imagine the expense.
20:38So you've also got a whole host of accessories that go with these outfits.
20:42Millinery especially was really, really big business.
20:46They would choose feathers, you know, these artificial flowers.
20:49They'd have sometimes stuffed, whole stuffed birds, fake fruit.
20:53It really became kind of an enormous, almost sculptural kind of walking art.
20:58So as well as the millinery, you've also got the parasol as well.
21:03They've got so many different areas, so many different things that they can sell to women,
21:07from textiles through to actually having the dresses made up themselves.
21:11It's a huge, huge array.
21:13But there was a problem.
21:17The store had lots to sell, but too few customers.
21:22The opening hype had died away, and it was quiet.
21:26Selfridge needed to bring the crowds back.
21:35Today, publicity stunts are commonplace.
21:38At Selfridges, launch events are central to the store's marketing.
21:41But in London in 1909, they were seen as tasteless.
21:47Harry Gordon Selfridge changed all that.
21:50Selfridge was one of the first people who made publicity stunts respectable.
21:55He had an approach to marketing to, first of all, grow the people in.
22:00In July 1909, opportunity landed in his lap.
22:04All England was talking of just one thing.
22:08Frenchman Louis Blériot had just completed the first flight over the English Channel.
22:15And Selfridge is there, standing on the coast in Kent,
22:19you know, ready to transport the aeroplane back.
22:23Selfridge placed the history-making plane in the middle of the shop floor.
22:28The effect was immediate.
22:31It became like a museum or a sightseeing attraction.
22:33It was, you know, a wonderful, it was an outing.
22:38This time, the crowds were here to stay, and business took off.
22:43Selfridges was modern, fashionable, and popular.
22:46That period just before the First World War was a period of enormous change and excitement in London.
22:52These kind of beacons of modernity are arriving on the streets of London,
22:56and one of those beacons of modernity was Selfridge's shop.
23:02The store's modernist philosophy extended to its politics.
23:06By 1910, the British suffragettes' campaign for women's right to vote was at its height.
23:11Selfridge made his store's position clear.
23:19Selfridge was a keen supporter of the suffragette movement.
23:22He advertised in their newspapers.
23:24He flew the flag above the shop.
23:26He wrote articles defending their cause.
23:28He also saw them as potential customers.
23:30So he stocked goods in their colours, the colours of the suffrage movement,
23:34which were green for hope, purple for dignity, and white for purity.
23:41Selfridge's support for the suffragettes made him popular with women shoppers.
23:46And when the campaign turned violent, his stance protected his store.
23:52In 1912, the suffragettes stepped up their campaign of militancy,
23:55and they started burning public buildings,
23:57they started spitting at policemen in the street,
24:00and they started smashing shop windows.
24:02Selfridge benefited from his support for them.
24:05They didn't smash his windows.
24:07Selfridge's egalitarian, distinctly American ideals were paying dividends.
24:14Obviously, in part, his support for women was a calculated attempt to get customers in.
24:21But he was an imaginative guy who wanted to promote something that was different from everywhere else.
24:28But of course, in the end, it benefited the store to some extent.
24:31Next, Selfridge challenged Britain's greatest divide of all, the class system.
24:43In the early 1900s, society was still clearly divided.
24:48Even when shopping, the classes did not mix.
24:51Selfridge's was the first store in Britain where every class shopped together.
24:57Before Selfridge, high-class people shopped at high-class stores,
25:03the upper-middle class at upper-middle class stores, skilled workers at different stores.
25:08What Selfridge did was he said to the British people,
25:13we are open to the whole British public, and everybody is welcome.
25:19The idea of appealing to all classes was openly sniffed at by his competitors.
25:24But anyone with money to spend was welcome at Selfridge's.
25:30Selfridge was a totally self-made man, so I think he appreciated the idea that
25:34everyone had the potential to be a wonderful, profit-making customer for him.
25:42Middle-class professions and their wives and children had money for the first time,
25:47and they wanted to be accepted and taken seriously.
25:51One of Selfridge's strategies to attract customers of every class
25:55was to introduce discounted products.
25:59In 1910, Selfridge's opened the Bargain Basement, a well-presented but price-led department.
26:08It caused a sensation.
26:09After a few years, it was worth a quarter of all the sales within the store.
26:15So, you know, that was pretty, a pretty good idea.
26:20Harry Selfridge also established the first fixed bi-annual sale.
26:24It's now a worldwide retail tradition.
26:27In 1910, the sales cemented Selfridge's position as a store that was open to all.
26:36It was a very American way of viewing the world. You know, the girl who comes in
26:42in a dirty dress, you know, who's working as a shop assistant, could be a movie star tomorrow.
26:48Selfridge's egalitarian approach extended to his staff.
26:51He treated them in a totally different way from his competitors.
27:06Selfridge brought customer service to London and transformed working in retail.
27:14In Edwardian times, poor working conditions blighted British department stores.
27:19Many households still had domestic servants, and shop staff were treated in much the same way.
27:27They worked 12-hour days. They didn't have any rights whatsoever.
27:31They worked six days a week. They had no holidays to speak of, so it was pretty hard.
27:38And like servants, shop staff lived in dormitories on site.
27:41Just outside London is this small, old-fashioned department store called Jackson's.
27:52Founded in 1875, you can still see today where the staff used to live above the store.
28:00Now, sadly, all we've got here today is the carcass of what used to be there.
28:05You've got to imagine, this was very primitive accommodation.
28:09You had one washbasin, you had simple beds.
28:12It wasn't like a hotel or your own house.
28:14It was very much, you live here, you work here.
28:18So it was the basics of everything.
28:20So there might have been at least 60 members of staff up here,
28:23all sharing a little partition between themselves,
28:26but all sharing the same washbasin.
28:29So you can imagine, at night, there would have been a bit of a queue to wash themselves.
28:35Living at the department store meant living by their rules.
28:39There was a curfew in the evening, and on the shop floor,
28:42staff would docked pay if they broke a list of management regulations.
28:47Here at Jackson's, we had some quite fair but strict fines.
28:51All assistants are to have breakfasted before they start work at eight o'clock.
28:56Fine for breach, sixpence.
28:59All staff must, at all times, not gossip or lounge around in groups,
29:04or you will be fined, threepence.
29:06And my favourite, all staff must provide themselves with tape measure,
29:11scissors and a pencil.
29:13Without these, he is useless.
29:18Harry Selfridge established a new code of employment practice in Britain.
29:23He did away with fines, and none of his staff lived on site.
29:27Instead, they received better pay.
29:31In return, he demanded a new culture of customer service.
29:37His big, big thing was, don't push the sale, just give them customer service.
29:41Customer service was key.
29:42And I think that's a very American thing still today.
29:47That, you know, if you treat the customer right, then they're going to want to buy.
29:52Selfridge ran a tight ship.
29:54He'd send the staff notes for improvements every morning.
29:59And if he found any dust, he'd pointedly write his initials in it with his finger.
30:03And because he was very sparing with his praise, he wasn't a gushing, effusive man at all.
30:12When he did say, well done, it actually meant something.
30:15Selfridge kept his distance, and he certainly never flirted or fraternised with staff.
30:22He thoroughly disapproved of bringing sex into the workplace.
30:29But unbeknownst to him, in later years, a secret affair did develop,
30:35and it involved someone close to him.
30:38His son, Harry Selfridge Jr., started work at the store.
30:42Jennifer Selfridge is Harry Jr.'s daughter.
30:48He fell in love with a pretty girl in her 20s who was working at Selfridge's,
30:57and worked for a while in the toy department,
31:01and they formed a relationship Gordon Sr. would not approve of.
31:08In a strange contradiction to the egalitarian philosophy of his store,
31:12Selfridge Sr. was incredibly snobbish when it came to his own family.
31:19He wanted his children to marry into the upper classes.
31:24British society was very heavily layered at that time, as we all know,
31:30and was doubtless that he was expected to marry a woman,
31:37an upper-class English woman, and Gordon Sr. disapproved.
31:44Selfridge Jr. was so worried, he kept his relationship under wraps,
31:49hiding his pregnant girlfriend away while he lived in a London apartment.
31:53At the store, Harry Gordon Selfridge's attitude remained modern and progressive.
32:02And in 1911, he took his greatest risk.
32:04Having make-up and perfume near the front of the store is an innovation that is now widespread.
32:20But that was really introduced by Selfridge.
32:25Harry Gordon Selfridge invented the ground floor beauty and cosmetics department.
32:30It is now the template for every department store.
32:37Thanks to Harry Selfridge, you walk into a department store pretty much anywhere around the world,
32:43and you walk straight into fragrance and cosmetics.
32:46But it was certainly not always the case.
32:51In the Edwardian period, make-up was available and judiciously worn,
32:56but it was not respectable.
32:59At a department store, it was generally hidden away on an upper floor.
33:04But Selfridge spotted an emerging opportunity.
33:07He liked the idea of having perfumes near the front of the store.
33:11He wanted to make a little bit of make-up more respectable than it was.
33:18Selfridge's brainstorm was to bring perfume and make-up together right by the main entrance.
33:24So the first thing that happens is your senses are assaulted with wonderful smells, wonderful scent.
33:30But the add-on of coloured make-up, it became not just acceptable,
33:35it became desirable for young women to wear coloured cosmetics.
33:42So he pulled everything together. It was enormously popular.
33:47Ground Floor Cosmetics continues in Selfridge's today,
33:51and it's one of the most lucrative departments.
33:55Michael Sheridan owns an international retail design agency.
33:58He believes Harry Selfridge's placement of cosmetics is fundamental to department stores.
34:07For me, it's very much the kind of candy that draws people into big retail spaces.
34:13It creates an enormous amount of theatre for people visiting department stores,
34:17and therefore very clever that he recognised that it should be one of the first things that you find
34:23when you go into a store that's supposed to offer you everything.
34:26Harry Selfridge's original ideas have inspired modern retail psychology.
34:34Today, stores use a variety of hidden techniques to encourage the customer to buy.
34:41According to Michael, at Selfridge's they're trying to seed the denim department in customers' minds.
34:51That's that wonderful display of hanging out the washing with continuous pairs of jeans,
34:55sort of almost a laundry line with denim.
34:58But also it's probably not so noticeable are the planters at the bottoms and the tops of the escalators.
35:04The floral displays in them are actually made out of denim.
35:07So whether you're a very observant shopper or you're a very unobservant shopper,
35:11you're going to leave with the impression that there's something going on to do with denim.
35:15So if in a week or so's time you're thinking,
35:18actually I do want a pair of jeans, chances are you'll be going back to Selfridge's.
35:24Back in 1914, Harry Selfridge's new ideas meant the store was booming.
35:28But it was about to need his retail genius more than ever.
35:39In 1914, World War One began.
35:43It was about to take a look back.
35:45On the face of it, war and shopping shouldn't mix.
35:49But in wartime London, life went on.
35:54There's a sense just that it's part of your patriotic duty to carry on as usual
35:58and to continue going shopping.
36:00And that was a part of the way you were going to resist the enemy.
36:03In fact, some London department stores turned the war to their advantage.
36:10Harrods had struck a deal to make British army uniforms.
36:15Selfridge made do with a contract for the French army's underwear.
36:21And in store, a cynical stunt helped the well-stocked pharmacy push its wares.
36:28They had a demonstration where the store pharmacists
36:31made mustard gas on the roof in 1915.
36:36It must have been horrific because the smell
36:39and the actual reality of it hitting home.
36:42And instead, mothers would rush to the chemist and buy gauze
36:45to send out to their boys, which of course was much needed.
36:54As the last year of the war approached,
36:56the store posted record annual profits.
36:59By 1919 and the end of the war,
37:03Selfridge had made so much money he could afford a lavish extension.
37:07The construction doubled the size of the store,
37:10creating the two-block site we see today.
37:12It was ready for the explosion of the 1920s.
37:27Selfridge's today markets itself as young and fashionable.
37:31It dedicates more space than any other London store to youth culture and trendy clothing.
37:38That identity began in the 1920s.
37:44The 1920s is the era of youth.
37:47It's a time when young people stopped deferring to their elders.
37:52After the catastrophe of the First World War,
37:54they weren't going to be dictated to by a bunch of crusty old men who'd caused so much trouble.
37:59And so you get this sense of youth and vigour.
38:04Harry Selfridge and his store were quick to embrace the new scene.
38:10Not only did they stock dresses in the fashionable shorter length,
38:14for the first time they were pre-made and ready to wear off the racks.
38:19This dress is a kind of really typical style for something that might have been worn in the mid-1920s.
38:25Now this is a huge departure from the styles that were being worn just a decade earlier.
38:31At their highest, dress hems came to just below the knee.
38:35Now this is really the sort of first time in women's fashion that dresses were this short.
38:40So you can imagine the kind of shock that it caused when women were out in public wearing styles like this.
38:47As new up-tempo music swept over from America, Selfridge's lightweight dresses started to fly off the racks.
38:56Women were dancing the Black Bottom, were dancing the Charleston.
38:59You get all of these new dances being developed.
39:02So it really, the sort of the dancing, the movement is all reflected.
39:05All of those changes are reflected in the style of dress that you see here.
39:10In London, there was a new breed of nightclubs and risque entertainment.
39:13Selfridge himself had always had a taste for nightlife, gambling and occasionally women.
39:21When his beloved wife Rosalie died suddenly in 1918,
39:25the 62-year-old became a familiar face in After Hours London.
39:28When someone like Harry Selfridge comes along and he starts going to these nightclubs
39:33and mixing with these younger people, even though he's an anomaly because he's so old,
39:39he's accepted because he's got money to spend and he loves being part of it.
39:43So why not?
39:44Selfridge was the first retailer to become a celebrity himself.
39:50And he harnessed that celebrity to his advantage,
39:53parading his showbiz friends through the store.
39:58So this birth of the cult of celebrity, if you want, that didn't really exist in those days,
40:04having Douglas Fairbanks come in, Charlie Chaplin come in.
40:08I mean, these were huge, major international stars.
40:11And they came in, and once they'd done whatever they were going to do,
40:15they'd go up to his office and sign his window.
40:18He had a corner window with a diamond-tipped pen and sign their autograph on the window.
40:25By now, the store itself was famous around the world.
40:29In particular, it was known for its extraordinary windows.
40:39The store has 21 plate glass windows running along Oxford Street.
40:43The stylistic displays are central to the store's identity.
40:49They invest huge resources into window dressing.
40:53Every few months, in the early hours and out of sight of the public,
40:57a specialist team changes the entire strip in unison.
41:02In the 1920s, the Selfridge's windows were the largest in the world,
41:07and the designs were revolutionary.
41:13Selfridge didn't just fill them with goods like other stores.
41:17He filled them with stories, narratives, pictures.
41:21He made them very attractive so that people imagined themselves in the store.
41:27For the first time in London, a store was not just selling products, but a lifestyle.
41:31And they took the unprecedented step of lighting their displays after dark.
41:39Selfridge's was one of the first public places to use mass electricity.
41:43And the store went on to debut many of the greatest inventions of the 20th century.
41:50It staged the first ever demonstration of television.
41:55And broadcast early radio.
41:56Harry Selfridge ensured that the store was always as futuristic as possible.
42:03Inside the store, there were other innovations.
42:06There were nine elevators.
42:08This had not happened before in British department stores.
42:14At the Museum of London, they've kept the ornate elevators from the 1920s.
42:18This was really cutting-edge technology, and that was something that Selfridge's offered many of its visitors.
42:25And so, for the first time, many people would have gone into a lift in Selfridge's.
42:30It was a new experience for them.
42:34The first thing that they did was look up at the ceiling,
42:37because they couldn't quite believe that they were going up.
42:40Another novelty that Gordon Selfridge introduced were female lift operators.
42:48And they were kitted out in beautiful white uniforms with knickerbockers and beautiful white jackets.
42:54And they would manually operate the lifts for anyone who came into them.
42:58And, of course, this was quite unusual to have women working in a lift,
43:01because it meant that very often women were in very close proximity to men in the same small space.
43:09And this was very unique.
43:11This was something that wasn't really seen as an acceptable practice previously.
43:17The elevator operators reflect Selfridge's liberal, racier style.
43:22At times, it put him at odds with Britain's conservative elite,
43:25who disapproved of his risqué approach to retail.
43:29There was a lot of snobbishness about what was considered the sort of vulgarity of Americans,
43:34and Selfridge really did fall into that.
43:36He was a bit excessive by English standards.
43:40And he did feel excluded.
43:43Selfridge was desperate to break into the British upper classes.
43:48But it was an obsession that was to cost his store dear.
43:51Selfridge spared no expense trying to make it as a British gentleman.
44:04He used the store's healthy profits to pay for astronomical personal expenses.
44:10Money in America was usually enough to give you kind of class status.
44:14It wasn't as easy in Britain, and he spent his money like water, and he was extremely extravagant.
44:22Selfridge rented Lord Lansdowne's grand house in London,
44:27and Highcliff Castle on the coast.
44:29And this never-before-seen footage shows him entertaining aboard his fully crewed luxury steam yacht.
44:39Whilst profits were up, the store could afford to support his expenditure.
44:43But behind the scenes, a perfect storm was brewing.
44:49It began with the Dolly sisters.
44:53They were identical twins.
44:56They were extraordinary creatures.
44:58They were petite when they grew up.
45:03Beautiful, dark, exotic-looking.
45:09By the late 1920s, the sisters were the most famous cabaret and film stars in the world.
45:16Their racy notoriety inspired the term Dolly Bird.
45:20And Harry Gordon Selfridge was absolutely besotted.
45:23There would have been quite a large number of very influential and famous men that would have
45:29been throwing themselves at the Dolly sisters at that time.
45:33And Selfridge was very persistent.
45:36He wanted to spend time with them. He thought they were great.
45:41Selfridge had floated the store on the stock market in 1926 and made a fortune.
45:47He had access to a great deal of money, and the Dollys were happy to spend it.
45:53He was very generous, gave them lots of different things.
45:58And through him, they got into gambling.
46:04One of the reasons why Selfridge and Jenny Dolly liked each other's company so much was gambling.
46:14Selfridge and the Dollys were regular faces at the card tables.
46:17But behind the smiles, Harry and Jenny were sliding towards a gambling addiction.
46:25Selfridge bankrolled huge losses at the tables of French casinos and then charged it to the store.
46:31He would fund the gambling, he would fund all the money, and if she lost, he lost, and if she won, she kept the money.
46:45This is particularly interesting because it's Harry Selfridge's account book and columns of figures of money that he's spent on sometimes tiny, tiny things.
46:59I mean, he even records magazines and newspapers.
47:05And then much larger sums, seriously large.
47:10Here's another entry for £1,200.
47:12And these sums of money, the larger sums, have no entry by the side of them.
47:19It is safe, I think, to assume that they are gaining debts.
47:23£1,200 is $65,000 in today's money.
47:30It's been estimated that she cost him about in the region of £200 million in contemporary money.
47:38The extravagance couldn't last.
47:41By the 1930s, the effects of the Great Depression were being felt in London.
47:45Selfridge's in particular was beginning to struggle.
47:48The other department stores had copied Harry's ideas, and the competitive advantage had been lost.
47:58What's more, Selfridge had made a fatal business error and over-expanded.
48:04By 1939, the store was in debt and hemorrhaging cash.
48:09But Harry continued to fund his lifestyle and gambling from the store coffers.
48:13As a publicly limited company, the Board of Selfridges could call an extraordinary general meeting.
48:2380-year-old Harry Gordon Selfridge was told to attend.
48:28The company was in difficulties by the late 1930s.
48:32And his personal debts had cost the company considerable money.
48:38He also had debts to the Inland Revenue, which were huge.
48:41The Board of Selfridges told him he had to pay his debts or go.
48:47Selfridge was demoted to honorary chairman and given a meagre pension.
48:53You can't go on forever.
48:55But at that point, in a move that was deeply ungracious and very badly handled,
49:01they guaranteed to give him a pension and stripped him of his job.
49:06Eight months later, after he kept coming into the store, the staff were embarrassed.
49:11His secretary had no letters to send to anybody.
49:15He would dictate them, but there was no work for him to do.
49:21By the end, Selfridge almost became an embarrassment to the store.
49:28Once they'd taken any managerial authority away from him, they were quite quick to take away most of what he'd been left.
49:36In 1940, the title of chairman was also withdrawn.
49:43Selfridge was told he was no longer welcome at his beloved store.
49:48But he couldn't let go.
49:49He travelled to Oxford Street every day, simply to stand in the street and stare up at the store he'd built.
50:05People saw him still in his rather smart clothes, then no longer very appropriate.
50:10Shabby, but kind of, you know, morning suit and top hat, looking at Selfridges.
50:19But really outside it and neglected.
50:24He used to count pennies at the bus stop by the Green Man pub to get on the bus from Putney and come to Oxford Street.
50:34And in 1943, standing opposite, looking incredibly threadbare,
50:39he was arrested for being a vagrant.
50:44Harry Gordon Selfridge died in 1947.
50:49Despite all his success, he passed away penniless.
50:55And finally he died and I think it was a very basic kind of funeral.
50:59So it was a sad ending.
51:02And, er, he didn't pass on his wealth.
51:06I don't think his children were particularly wealthy.
51:09There was no wealth to pass on.
51:12Although Selfridge left no inheritance, his granddaughter Jennifer holds no ill feeling.
51:18Well, I, I, I feel, have no problem with that at all.
51:22I think my, my grandfather earned all that money and he also managed to spend all of it.
51:31But there is a final extraordinary twist to the tale.
51:37Jennifer, her siblings and her mother were always kept hidden from Harry Gordon Selfridge.
51:43This private home movie shows Jennifer's parents happily together as they were for the rest of their lives.
51:55Yet incredibly, Harry Jr. never felt able to reveal his wife and family to his father.
52:00Jennifer Selfridge never met her grandfather, Harry Gordon Selfridge.
52:09The relationship and we as four children were kept quiet, secret in a way.
52:17Isn't that awful? Isn't that ridiculous?
52:20It is absurd.
52:21But it all worked out.
52:24And I'm happy to be descended from him.
52:29You know, he made something great and it's still there.
52:33You know, it's still there.
52:36Selfridge's legacy is strong.
52:42The store has survived 70 years since he passed.
52:47In the Second World War, its deep basements were used to stage secure communications between
52:52Churchill and Roosevelt.
52:55And from the 50s to 90s, it continued to trade.
52:58But it was no longer an industry leader, changing ownership several times.
53:02Then, in 2003, it was finally taken back into private hands.
53:11The Westerns, a Canadian billionaire retail family, have rejuvenated the store.
53:18Reinventing the Harry Gordon Selfridge formula of interior design and high fashion.
53:26Under the Westerns, Selfridge's is now posting record profits once again.
53:30Thanks to Harry Gordon Selfridge, the store still has pride of place on Oxford Street.
53:38It stands today as testament to one American's lasting impact on Britain.
53:45The secret of Selfridge's is out.
53:48Harry's American dream is alive in the heart of London.
53:53It has withstood two world wars, and there it is today, full of life with flags flying.
54:02And that personality, I believe, is imbued in the building through the force of the personality of the man who built it.
54:11The secret is preserved, and as we have been tried.
54:14The animal tastes tutti og Mary's plays in the building through the building through the building through the building.
54:16The one who has played thediocese without the building through the body of the building.
54:18Transcription by CastingWords