Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge (49 page)

17. In 1928, Harry’s daughter Violette and her aviator husband Jacques de Sibour flew in their tiny Gipsy Moth on a daring trip to go big-game hunting in Indo-China. En route they mapped a new trail over the Burmese jungle down to Bangkok. Obliged to travel light, Violette (seen off here by her father at Stag Lane Airport) still packed a black lace evening dress and a dozen pairs of silk stockings.

18. Highcliffe Castle, Christchurch, leased by the Selfridge family as their country home from 1916 to 1922. Selfridge spent today’s equivalent of £1,125,000 on modernizing it to suit his tastes. Rose Selfridge and her daughters ran a hospital for wounded American soldiers at the castle during the First World War.

19. Harry Selfridge playing his favourite game of poker on board his yacht,
Conqueror, c
. 1930. He always used heavy, mother of pearl chips – thought to bring good luck – and his own, specially made cards embossed with his initials.

20. Harry’s steam yacht, designed by Camper & Nicholson and first registered in 1911, weighed over 850 tons, was 211 feet long and slept twenty in considerable comfort. Used as an Armed Patrol Yacht in the First World War, Selfridge acquired the yacht in 1927, renaming her the
Conqueror
.

21. The Dolly Sisters – Rosie and Jenny – danced into Harry’s life in the early 1920s. Whether his grown-up children approved or not, the ‘Dollies’ were part of the extended Selfridge ‘family’. In Le Touquet in the summer of 1926, Harry looks fondly at the twins, shown flanking his daughter Beatrice. She looks less than amused.

22. Sports stars beat a path to the store to make personal appearances, often being handsomely paid to give master-classes to customers in golf, cricket and in particular tennis. Harry Selfridge – a lifelong tennis fan, albeit watching not playing – hired Wimbledon champion Suzanne Lenglen to endorse Selfridge’s as ‘the home of tennis equipment’. Innovative windows backed every in-store appearance.

23. Selfridge’s famous window displays were show-stopping productions. From furs to food, toys to telephones, their visual mastery won countless awards for the creative visual display staff, who took inspiration from all aspects of art and design. One of a series of windows based on Surrealism, this is a typical sale window, promoting basic bath towels – with a twist.

24. In 1910, anticipating the emergent trend for cosmetics, Harry Selfridge opened the first dedicated perfume and cosmetics hall on the ground floor of
any
department store. Buyer Nellie Elt presided over what became the store’s most profitable department and is seen here,
c.
1925, standing by the Elizabeth Arden counter. The temperamental cosmetics tycoon and Mr Selfridge became life-long friends.

25. The Otis Elevator Company launched the first step-type escalator at the Paris Exposition in 1900. By 1921 their engineers had refined the system to create the design we know today. Escalators revolutionized customer-flow through department stores. This escalator was installed at Selfridge’s in 1926, the most up-to-date model in a London store at that time.

26. In 1935, Harry Selfridge’s last love interest was the Swedish-French actress Marcelle Rogez. When their affair ended in 1938, she moved to Hollywood, where she met and married the film director Wesley Ruggles.

27. Film director Frank Capra – in London for the opening of his film
You Can’t Take It With You
in 1938 – signs the famous autograph window in the Chairman’s office, observed by Harry Selfridge and his son Gordon Jr. Celebrity guests had been writing their names with a diamond-tipped pen since the window was inaugurated in 1911.