Dearest M&S, has anyone in Britain ever got dressed without you? I mean, everyone has a Marks & Spencer story. Given the fashion department’s extraordinary 100-year history, it’s no surprise.
Childhood forays into its clothing department could be the great British leveller. Consider it fashion democracy at its finest. Jerry Hall took daughters Georgia-May and Lizzie (who starred in a campaign with Hall, Twiggy and Erin O’Connor) to the Richmond branch. But equally, a friend who grew up in Stirling recalls trips with her mother; wherever you were, there was always M&S. That friend recalls lusting over a blue pinafore dress with an embroidered lamb which hopped into one of the fronts pocket, but another was besotted with a Minnie Mouse (reversible) jumper which she wore until threadbare. I had a denim rara skirt, which I felt was so much of my identity that I yanked it on long after I’d grown out of it and it just sort of skirted my bum. I wore it with lacey black tights and every single one of my mother’s necklaces to warble along to The Immaculate Collection.
Our local branch (Kingston-upon-Thames) was always swelteringly hot, sometimes to the point where I’d have to throw myself on the floor, coat abandoned, legs flailing. In my defence, I was five. Every trip for new school uniform had me mooning over the racks which looked much more exciting.
21-year-old Lesley Chapman from Penge working behind the counter of the Oxford Street branch in 1966.
I still remember all the things my mother refused to buy me. A green-and-blue shell suit tracksuit. Pointed flat jelly shoes in a swirling floral design which my friend Jemima had. I can picture them on the shelf, my stomach in knots from aching for them. Sometimes as a sweetener, we’d be allowed a pack of chocolate buttons on the way out to the car.
Later as a teenager, trained in the art of M&S-ing, I knew to seek out St Michael-branded bits in charity shops. I had a velvet blazer I wore over bodysuits (of course M&S) throughout the ’90s. At university, I lived in the men’s cashmere jumpers (still do). I could do with its denier and opaque options as my specialist subject.
When my daughter was born, I was back in the childrenswear department, nostalgia laden, as I picked up babygros. She now has a particular penchant for its flared leggings (the trouser of choice for most nine year olds I know in east London) worn with my cashmere sweater from the 16Arlington collaboration (stolen, almost immediately).
School leavers working for Marks & Spencer at the Oxford Circus branch in 1980.
Did you know that M&S has been dressing our bottoms since 1926? Then they had garters and sanitary belts, now thankfully, we have Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. In 1971, a trellis pattern lace bra was 71p. In 1969, it was reported in Scotland that Queen Elizabeth II wore M&S twinsets (heaven). In 1986, its coat promotion was in .
If you bought a pink coat in 2013, you were part of a sold-out-in-a-single-day mania. For fashion writers of a certain generation (ahem), it’s a moment seared into their reporting past. A stake from which all later pink coats would be judged.
As someone who’s documented endless new seasons from the beloved British stalwart, I can tell you that everyone has an opinion on its form; a gem from days gone by, the shoes they pass off as something much more Bond Street-adjacent, or more likely, the dress/swimsuit/barrel leg trouser they’ve been living in all summer long. She’s certainly not looking bad for a century young. Happy 100, ma’am.