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A dedicated experimenter in fashion I 185

He would photograph Elizabeth II with her infants, Prince
Charles and Princess Anne.

Unlike Lorna, Ruth hailed from a comfortable background.
‘Her father manufactured things out of ivory, arty stuff,’ said Bernard.
‘I think he was in a way a craftsman and also employed craftsmen. It
was a small business but it was a business.’
Ringing the changes elsewhere, David found a new job as
clerk to a chartered accountancy firm. This gave him articled status,
which meant that he could now pursue the highest qualification in his
profession and become a chartered accountant. Although he leapt at
the chance, having worked so hard already at his other course in cer-
tified accountancy, he refused to abandon it. As a result he now faced
preparing for two sets of extraordinarily exacting exams.

He scooped up new friends on his courses too, many of them
equally driven young men looking for a start in business, and became
particularly close to Samuel ‘Sigi’ Faith. Sigi had come to Britain in
the legendary Kindertransport rescue operation that saved almost
10,000 children, mostly Jews, during the nine months before the Sec-
ond World War broke out. After the war ended, Sigi was retrieved
by his parents; miraculously they had managed to survive among a
handful of Czech Jews who escaped Europe to live in exile, enduring
the privations of Japanese occupation in the Shanghai Ghetto. The
Faiths’ winding progress around the world finally landed them in a
house in Whitton, around the corner from Montrose Avenue.
On 10 March 1950 loss struck the Lewis family once more
when Rivke Pokrasse died in Nightingale House, Wandsworth, an in-
stitution formerly known as the Home of Aged Jews. She was eighty-
two years old, so many of her dreams in tatters, oblivious to what
her grandsons were on the brink of achieving. They buried Rivke in

186 I A dedicated experimenter in fashion

an unmarked grave beside Hyman’s at Edmonton Jewish Cemetery
(some years later David and Bernard gave her a proper headstone).
Other than these spare facts, Bernard knew little about his grand-
mother’s later life. As far as he could recall, there had been scant con-
tact with his paternal grandmother since Lew passed away, five years
earlier. Not even Clara kept up with her mother-in-law enough to
hear about the funeral.

It was a different life in those days. In our community the
contact was not continuous. Most people didn’t have a tele-
phone, and people didn’t write. So you found out about
things when you happened to come across somebody who
mentioned it – somebody who had heard from another per-
son.
After my father’s death I had little to do with my fa-
ther’s side, although when I was still in the air force, I did hear
that Barney, who was married to my aunt Dora and worked
in Spitalfields market, helped my mother at Old Street. And
once my mother visited Monty and Lily, his wife, at their
house in Palmers Green. By then they were a newsagent-to-
bacconist.

And that seems to have been that. The Lewises’ detachment
from the Pokrasses was complete.
In the summer of 1950 David sat his final accountancy exams,
taking the incorporated and chartered papers within weeks of each
other. No sooner had he finished than he fell ill, undoubtedly from
overwork. Clara took him off to Bournemouth to recuperate – their
first proper holiday together, and another sign of financial health to
indicate that the Old Street shop was ticking over nicely. It was left to
Bernard to find an official-looking letter on the doormat in Montrose
Avenue. ‘I phoned him with the news. He had passed!’
The first member of the Lewis family had gained a profession-

A dedicated experimenter in fashion I 187

al qualification. How did David celebrate securing this purchase on a
safe and steady career? By quitting his secure, hard-won job to start
out on his own. ‘That was him. Taking charge of his court martial, and
soon as he got qualified, he left the practice he was working for.’ He
was very entrepreneurial and after another five years in practice he
would go on to attain the final, top qualification, Fellow of the Insti-
tute of Chartered Accountants, entitling him to place the letters FCA
after his name. But David was essentially, as he put it himself, a ‘frus-
trated businessman manqué’. Accountancy would be the first business
that he operated.
First he needed an office and found a tiny, affordable place
in Piccadilly Mansions, tucked behind the tall illuminated signs that
flashed over Piccadilly Circus. When his friend Sigi, who had also
qualified, told him that he had decided against practising accountan-
cy and instead would work with his in-laws, selling women’s shoes
at Ilford market, David asked if he would mind lending him his sur-
name. Lewis, Faith & Co. would look reassuringly substantial, not to
mention trustworthy, on the brass nameplate of his office door.
Now David had to get out and about and drum up a clien-
tele. To tide himself over he began lecturing in accountancy at night
school; his grasp of his subject and commanding presence must have
impressed his lecturers, given that he had only recently completed the
course himself. Around this time he also decided to grow a mous-
tache. ‘To make him look older,’ said Bernard. ‘We both tried to look
older. It was a distinct disadvantage, our youth.’ Later David grew a
beard, maintaining it for most of his adult life. But despite appearanc-
es, he was not unswervingly conventional. ‘Although in his person-
al life he was absolutely straight down the middle,’ said Bernard, ‘in
dealing with other people he understood what you might call human
frailties and was tolerant of them.’ This easy-going stance would stand
him in good stead, and he continued to convert associates into friends
wherever he went.

188 I A dedicated experimenter in fashion

Right from the start, David’s social and professional lives
nourished one another and he acquired his first substantial nucleus of
clients through his work as treasurer of the Young Israel youth clubs.
‘The treasurer before him was a chap named, I think, Don,’ recalled
Bernard. ‘He was also an accountant with some private clients. And
I think Don gave it up and either sold on the clients or passed them
over to David, so he picked up about half a dozen from him.’
Through Don he recruited another important client, Albert
Harris, who ran estate agents F.W. Dennis in Wembley (coinciden-
tally, Bernard already knew Harris because some years earlier Derek
Levy had suggested that he might be able to find Bernard some prem-
ises). Over the years Harris and David would grow close, embarking
on increasingly interesting joint ventures.
Next David began to receive steady work from the Official Re-
ceiver, preparing statements of affairs for insolvent businesses, largely
dealing with receiverships and company wind-ups. Initially he was
very happy ‘for any kind of work’, although it would not be long before
he concluded that it was ‘too depressing to be working almost exclu-
sively in the wreckage of other people’s careers, the failures’. Within
months he was so busy that he needed a receptionist. He did not look
far. Ruth, who was now his fiancée, resigned from Marcus Adams.
Astoundingly, Bernard never once set foot in Piccadilly Man-
sions, nor did David ever visit his brother’s shops. Still, they kept in
close contact, talking about the ins and outs of what they were up to,
and although not working side by side, they adopted similar methods.
They also shared similar talents. Like Bernard, David excelled at both
the commercial aspects and the minutiae of his work, grasping the big
picture while zooming in on tiny details. As his son Ben put it, David
had an unerring eye after years of filling in ledgers, and was primed
to pounce on the single mistake in a fifty-page document whilst also
being able to fillet information to recognise salient patterns. Most

A dedicated experimenter in fashion I 189

important of all, he possessed an instinct for judging whether such
information was useful.
When Geoffrey returned from his hated National Service in
December 1950, his elder brothers decided that he should contin-
ue with what was familiar and open a greengrocer’s in Richmond.
Ruth went into the business as a partner, despite having barely met
Geoffrey, which says a lot for the confidence that the family must
have inspired in her. The whole family gathered for the official
opening, on a foggy Saturday morning. There were few passers-by –
not an auspicious start.
Come the New Year Bernard finally acquired his very own
motor. A 1940 Riley, which he bought from a showroom on the Hol-
loway Road for £625, it was one of the last cars to have been made in
Britain as the war escalated. As far as he was concerned this was only
a placeholder vehicle; he was already on the waiting list for a Triumph
Mayflower.
His Riley keys in hand, there remained one final step before he
could begin living out his dream of a secure middle-class life. He and
Lorna married in March 1951. The wedding reception, a tea organ-
ised by Lorna’s sisters, was held in a room above the Regent cinema in
Neasden. The best man – who else but David? – gave a speech.

Quite the happiest person in the room, according to the pho-
tographs, was a beaming Clara, who looks absolutely delighted. By
contrast, Lorna’s parents appear stiff, as if not much used to being
photographed, or indeed to smiling. The bride holds a lovely bouquet,
definitely not of Bernard’s devising, and Sydney Samuelson made a
cine film to record the day.

Afterwards Bernard chauffeured his bride to a proper honey-
moon, taking a ferry across the Channel, their first trip abroad. First
stop Paris, the City of Lights and romance, then they headed for the
sunshine of the south of France. Lorna cuts a sleek figure in their

190 I A dedicated experimenter in fashion

honeymoon snaps, all five feet two inches of her dressed impeccably,
as befitted a sophisticated lady of the fashion trade.

When the newlyweds returned home it was to a new address
in a rented flat. Goodwood House was one of five new three-storey
apartment blocks at Park Court, Lawrie Park Road, in Sydenham near
Crystal Palace. Once again, the Lewises’ social network had come up
trumps, Bernard’s pal Ronnie Rustin having told them about it (Ron-
nie married his fiancée Lena a few weeks before them, taking another
of the flats). Their home was hardly luxurious, consisting of a living
room, a small kitchen, one bathroom, two bedrooms and no central
heating, but Bernard ensured that it had the most modern of conve-
niences, a television.
David too rented one of the flats – number 3, directly across
the landing from Bernard and Lorna. He needed a new home because
on 24 June he and Ruth were themselves married, at the West London
Synagogue on Upper Berkeley Street, Mayfair. Naturally Bernard was
best man. In later years David joked that he chose this day to coin-
cide with the date for the quarterly payment of rent, to ensure that he
would not forget it. (Whether he worried more about forgetting his
wedding anniversary or the rent is unclear.) Afterwards guests head-
ed to the Rembrandt Hotel in Knightsbridge for a smart reception
funded by Ruth’s parents – quite a contrast to Bernard and Lorna’s tea
above the cinema. The occasion was recorded by Bertram Park, the
celebrated portrait photographer who shared the 43 Dover Street stu-
dio with Marcus Adams and Park’s wife Yvonne Gregory (they were
known as the Three Photographers). Never one to forego an oppor-
tunity to enlarge his business knowledge, David palled up with the
Rembrandt’s manager and was taken round for a behind-the-scenes
tour. Then the happy pair were off, by boat and train to Switzerland,
beginning a partnership that would endure for sixty years.

The couple could scarcely have been closer: Ruth still work-

A dedicated experimenter in fashion I 191

ing, unpaid, as David’s secretary, travelling back and forth to Piccadil-
ly Circus by train and tube together twice a day until they had saved
up enough for their very own pre-war baby Austin.
Ruth and Lorna, the sisters-in-law across the landing, also got
on well, but as Bernard said, ‘We weren’t in and out of each other’s
flats.’ Everyone was working too hard.
It is a cosy picture, the two brothers and their brides living
parallel lives, each tending their business, their wives as partners in
work and family. David and Bernard were reproducing a version of
their parents’ marrage. But in stark contrast to Lew and Clara, who
battled their misfortunes largely in isolation, Bernard and David had
each other, a support they could always rely on.

*

The day Godfrey turned eighteen he duly received his summons to
register for National Service. On the required day he presented him-
self for the mandatory medical examination, after which he would be
graded for his suitability to perform active service – ranging from a
potential I (fit) to IV (totally unfit). To nobody’s great surprise, due
to his compromised lungs, a charming personality did not present a
sufficiently persuasive case for him to pass the test. Assessed as Grade
III, he was put on a reserve list for clerical duties in case of military
conflict. Apart from that, he was free to go.
Some young men might have been disheartened, but for God-
frey and his family the rebuff brought unalloyed delight. ‘Who want-
ed to be called up if there was no war to fight?’ said Bernard.
In an alternative rite of passage, Godfrey sat his driving test
and passed, meaning he could use the family’s Vauxhall to deliver
stock to Old Street and more. But he was still stranded in his mother’s

192 I A dedicated experimenter in fashion

shop for much of the day. It must have been hard for him to embrace
the tedium of serving a constant traffic of customers, let alone to see it
as the stroke of fortune it was, compared with his parents’ struggles to
make a living in the 1930s. Always a sunny character, Godfrey strode
through life acutely aware of his family’s poverty, but mercifully free
of those distressing memories of his parents’ sudden fall from pros-
perity that haunted his eldest brothers. And if he lacked David and
Bernard’s entrenched sense of financial insecurity, it is perhaps un-
surprising if he also lacked something of their drive.
While the youngest Lewis brother chafed at his confinement,
Geoffrey too felt horribly cut off. His greengrocer’s in Richmond did
not lose money but neither did it make any, there was too much local
competition. His days became a wearisome Sisyphean trudge through
tasks that promised nothing but repetition. Liking each day less than
the last, after a year he conceded defeat. The family disposed of the
lease, clearing enough money to pay back Ruth. It was time to return
to Old Street, but what Geoffrey really needed was a fresh start.

12

A family business

Amid the grey and the rubble, the austerity and grief that still lin-
gered in London, women wanted to have fun, to look good, and to
find a mate. Bernard found himself running an enterprise perfectly
in tune with his age. Better yet, he had opened the door to a whole
new avenue for the business, as a manufacturer supplying himself.
As each venture in home production came good, he began to see the
Wool Shops themselves as something of a test laboratory. The takings
steadily improved, and most garments that he produced himself sold
well, upping his turnover and profit. Now he wanted to take the ex-
periment to its next stage. What he had begun to learn even as a child
was that retail, and especially this new business he had landed in, was
fundamentally about two things: product and shops. It was no good
getting one of them right without the other. Having refined his nose
for merchandise he was ready to improve his premises.
He began casting around for somewhere more substantial to
open another shop; it would be all clothes, the knitting wool had al-
ready been dropped. But other issues pressed on him. It was increas-
ingly clear that Clara, who had gained weight over the years, could
not sustain the physical labour of Old Street, standing on her feet all
day, hefting about crates of fruit. Running the gown shop with Bet-
ty had suited her far better, with fewer customers to serve for more
money – at least, it should have been for more money. Then there
were his younger brothers to consider, both frustrated and bored.
Having already decided that clothing was his best bet for
the future, it did not require a gargantuan mental leap for Bernard
to arrive at his next revelation: the rest of the family should get out

194 I A family business

of greengrocery too. What they needed was a clothes shop, and he
would run it for them. ‘The idea was that this could take care of ev-
erybody.’ Such a business might demand a lot less of his mother while
offering a great deal more scope for Geoffrey and Godfrey. If all went
well, perhaps it could hold out the prospect of a permanent way out
of relentless toil.

He discussed the plan with his trusted sounding board, Da-
vid, who could not fault his reasoning. They just needed to secure
the right premises – no mean feat when there was still very little con-
struction afoot in the city, a problem exacerbated by the fact that so
many able-bodied youths were hoovered up to do National Service.
After the disruption of two world wars, the development of shops had
scarcely evolved since the Victorian era; good sites were thin on the
ground, and the competition for them was correspondingly fierce. To
secure the lease for a decent shop the brothers needed to look like
serious contenders.

David put out feelers with commercial estate agents. Since
he was the accountant with an impressive-looking business address,
they decided that he should receive the agents’ particulars. Handily
enough, most were based in and around the West End, which meant
that he could quickly follow up any promising lead with a phone call
and if need be a personal visit.
Brochures began to dribble in for unprepossessing or unat-
tainable premises and the brothers realised quite how steep a chal-
lenge they faced. They refined the brief for their property search: they
were not bothered where in London the shop was based. All that mat-
tered was that it should be of a reasonable size in a satisfactory trading
position.
The game was on. And on and on it went. Until one day an
agency called Healey & Baker contacted David about the lease of a
shoe shop on the busy Hackney thoroughfare of Mare Street, in a

A family business I 195

stretch known locally as the Narrows. He and Bernard visited the site.
What struck them first was that there was plenty of passing trade, and
a significant proportion came in the more or less shapely forms of
working women and housewives. It was a similar customer profile to
their clientele in Holloway, but the store itself was in another league:
not a shack, but a real shop that could make real money. ‘Lordship
Lane was a little tuppenny-ha’penny half shop at the back of beyond.
The Hackney shop was in a proper shopping street in a good pitch.’
Naturally, the rent for Mare Street was at another level too.
A peculiarity of commercial property was that you often had to pay
a premium, known in the trade as key money, to secure a lease for
premises in a good spot. Key money could sometimes work in a
tenant’s favour, as it had for Aunt Betty when she sold on the lease on
the Surbiton dress shop. But it was bad news if, like Bernard, you had
not the wherewithal to pay for it.
The numbers were stark. They would have to find a princely
£3,000 premium to take over the lease – and that was what it would
cost simply to take over the contract, before paying a penny of the
freeholder’s rent or the expenses for fitting the shop. But the brothers
were undeterred. Mare Street seemed too good a chance to pass up.
They sat their mother down and laid out the plan. And Clara
trusted her boys, so much so that she readily agreed to sell her house
to raise the capital. It was a massive roll of the dice, but she was more
than prepared to bet on her boys and let the future take care of it-
self. Although this was a bravura move psychologically, in practi-
cal terms it turned out to be fairly simple to execute. There was no
shortage of willing buyers for the house and they got £3,000 for it.
Clara and the younger boys moved into another rented flat in Park
Court, on the ground floor of a block neighbouring David and Ber-
nard’s. ‘It wasn’t only that we wanted to be near each other,’ said

196 I A family business

Bernard, ‘although of course that was an advantage, but it was easy.
The flats were there, you could rent them, and they were affordable.’
If the Hackney shop did not work out, they would still have the
income from Old Street to fall back on, Bernard told himself. In truth,
he well knew that if the Hackney business failed, with house prices es-
calating fast, Whitton would not be replaceable any time soon. What
is more, £3,000 only covered a portion of the outlay necessary for the
new shop. He still had to fit it out and buy stock. To make it happen,
a tricky deal needed to be struck.
Togged out in their smartest suits, David and Bernard went
to meet the shop’s owner in a basement flat on Prince Albert Road
off Regent’s Park. ‘He was going to work for a large shoe company
as an area manager. So he didn’t want the liability, he couldn’t run it
anymore.’ The negotiation went well, thanks to David’s creative sug-
gestions for stretching their cash. ‘We agreed to pay £1,000 down and
the rest over the year,’ remembered Bernard, ‘and the owner took a
lien over the shop in the meantime.’ This meant they needed to earn
enough from the business to pay out the remaining £2,000 within
twelve months, or they would be in default. It was a risk, but it was
the best chance they could get. The brothers put the lease in Clara’s
name and signed the contracts.
Sixty-five years later, Bernard remained somewhat mystified
that he had summoned the audacity to stake his mother’s home on a
brand new business. ‘I must have been successful enough for me to do
it – there must have been something, another ingredient in there that
we had that others didn’t. And I think it must partly have been price
due to our manufacturing.’ By undercutting rivals, his stock was sell-
ing indecently well, reaping a sufficiently significant profit to suggest
what might be achievable at a grander scale. The prize was worth the
risk. ‘If this shop worked we were okay, we could stabilise and move
onto the next thing.’

A family business I 197

All the same, looking back, he remained surprised that his
family vested such faith in him. ‘My mother would have gone along
with it, but David must have also thought I could do it.’ Perhaps it was
David’s belief that cemented his own. In the absence of Lew, there was
nobody whose opinion Bernard valued more.
Mare Street came with three floors, enough for a stock room
above the shop, and a spare room on the second floor to serve as Ber-
nard’s office – just twelve foot square perhaps, but sufficient to house
two trestle tables in an L-shape. Bernard would sit at one and a cler-
ical assistant at the other, on hand to do the admin, the books and
whatever else he might need.

Deciding how to redesign the ground floor demanded a little
more imagination. Bernard tackled this task in customary autodidact
fashion. First step reconnaissance, roaming up and down Mare Street
and similar shopping hubs, casing the competition, seeing how they
did things and how he could do better. Then out came pen and pa-
per to sketch a shopfit that seemed modern, exciting and as different
as possible from the others – not at all ambitious for a man whose
pedigree in shop design consisted of putting up two wood-and-iron
shacks.

Yet being an outsider, free of preconceptions, proved an as-
set. ‘Because I was an amateur I did what an amateur does: think
what is required, then do it. It wasn’t a question of following what a
shop should look like, what other people did – the conventional way.
I started from a different position.’ When he found no examples of
what he wanted he created his own. ‘I invented the fittings and things
like that.’
The results were innovative for their time. Bernard painted
the picture almost seven decades later, each detail as fresh in his mind
as if he were just putting in the final touches before turning the sign
on the front door to ‘open’:

198 I A family business

All the merchandise is displayed in the windows on the street
so customers can see everything and decide what they want
before they come inside. Down one side of the shop I had the
counter where we served people, there was no self-service
in those days. Opposite the counter there was merchandise
hanging in glass cabinets, skirts and blouses mostly.
Behind the counter I turned the whole wall into cu-
bicles and then in the cubicles you put folded merchandise –
styled-up cotton T-shirts, sweaters and blouses. We collected
these from the wholesaler folded up in cellophane bags and
the conventional thing to do was to take them out of the bags
and hang them in a glass cabinet behind the counter as well.
But I invented the cubicles.

In this system, goods would be kept neatly inside their bags
– a novel approach, although it was a logical progression from the
cubbyhole system Bernard had used in the past for selling knitting
wool. Storing wares in this way offered a couple of advantages. First,
shop assistants could pluck out garments fast, then remove them
from their bags with great ceremony and unfold them on the counter,
then attend to the next customer while the first appraised her pro-
spective purchase, which meant that at any given time one assistant
could serve two or three people. Second, if they left only a limited
number of items in the cubicles, stock levels would appear low, mak-
ing garments seem more desirable (the rest of the merchandise would
be hidden from view, upstairs or under the counter, ready to top up
the cubicles in a quiet moment).
Bernard’s layout also seemed more modern than that of
neighbouring shops thanks to its easy-flowing, open use of space.
By contrast, old-fashioned outfits, such as Denny’s dress shop next
door, usually had a complicated arcade-style shop front with a large,
glass-fronted, walk-around island in the centre where they would dis-
play what was on offer, rather like an aquarium for clothing.

A family business I 199

His shop design decided, Bernard faced an equally challeng-
ing task: acquiring decent stock to fill it, and in far greater quantities
than he was accustomed to buy or manufacture. ‘Finding any sort of
merchandise was difficult and then finding the right merchandise was
much more difficult – it always is, even today.’ Wholesalers still had
their pick of customers, so he had to winkle his way into their good
books, and pronto. ‘You’ve got to put yourself out there, check around
and chase.’ Whatever Bernard’s limitations in small talk, in business
patter he did fine, rapidly expanding the number of suppliers and out-
door makers ready to take a punt on the persuasive young chap who
had started out flogging potatoes and apples on a bombsite.
What did his customers desire? ‘They always want new. So the
focus of the shop would be separates, they were the new thing.’ Early
on, he identified a particularly scarce object of desire, nylon stock-
ings with fancy black seams and heels. He soon sniffed out a source,
befriending another keen young entrepreneur, Kenneth Leigh, who
was based in the East End. Leigh produced the nylons, but there was
no point in placing any advance orders. ‘The wholesalers didn’t know
what was going to turn up, I just got what I could.’ Another major
wholesaler, M. Duke & Sons, based on the corner of Margaret Street
in W1, also came up trumps with some highly desirable cotton knit-
wear to line those cubbyholes, fancy T-shirts then being all the rage.
All that remained was to decide what to do with Mare Street’s
biggest marketing tool, its window display. Bernard commissioned
two large, angled windows to flank the entrance. His goal was to
squeeze the best merchandise into the display with price tickets clear-
ly visible beside each garment. ‘Then customers could come in and
say, “I want that white blouse with lace, sixteen shillings and eleven-
pence” and you’d know what it was,’ he explained. But that did not
mean the window should appear boring. Wanting the displays to
be as energetic as possible, he set about packing them to the rafters

200 I A family business

with garments arranged in various states of animation. There were
swimsuits on flying torsos, blouses, jackets and knitwear on wire-
framed busts, a parade of skirts, and stockings swanking about on
disembodied legs – all jazzed up with window-dressing props, and
neither a ball of knitting wool nor a fuddy-duddy frock to be seen.
From start to finish the shop’s makeover took six weeks. Then
in came the signmaker to add the final detail: Lewis emblazoned
across the beautiful wood fascia above the entrance, in a curling italic
script based on Bernard’s signature.
Even as the frenzy of preparations was under way at Mare
Street, Bernard was still hastening to the market at the crack of dawn
every day to buy fruit and veg for his greengrocer’s. ‘I wasn’t going to
give it up until I saw how Hackney did. But it had to work. It just had
to.’
Mare Street’s grand opening was set for a Saturday. He hard-
ly slept the night before. ‘I can remember sitting in my bedroom in
Crystal Palace, on the end of the bed in front of the electric fire and
thinking, “This is it, it’s our one chance. If this doesn’t work, we’re
finished.”’
That morning Godfrey headed off to open up Old Street by
himself while Bernard, Geoffrey and Clara drove across London to
Hackney. At 9 a.m. Geoffrey unlocked the doors and the three waited
behind the counter for their first customer.
It was a sluggish start. Then they were mobbed.

*

Study a photo of the interior of a Lewis shop on a Saturday in the early
1950s and you might be forgiven for thinking that Beatlemania had
landed in London a decade earlier than previously advertised. Mare
Street proved a sensation. ‘From the first morning you could see it
was a goer,’ said Bernard.

A family business I 201

Why such a success? It was not as if Lewis was the only game
in town. ‘There were plenty of other shops around as well. It was just
one of many. But none probably looked as fresh as ours or specialised
in tops and bottoms – separates.’ Undoubtedly, the trendy decor was
a draw, but as sales stormed on, week after week, it became clear that
there must be something more to Lewis’s popularity than its modish
looks. ‘I think what it was about was getting the right gear at the right
price and one way or another we did. I don’t know, I mean I’m not a
fashion person,’ he added, with faintly absurd but utterly sincere hu-
mility. ‘But I must have been able to choose the right merchandise.’
It is hard to disagree. What a boon the shop must have been
to working-class women and girls, parched of fashion for so many
years, while magazines and picture houses oozed tantalising images
of glamour – from Dior’s extravagant New Look skirts billowing with
enough silk to make a parachute, to Hollywood stars like Jane Russell
and Rita Hayworth, with their gravity-defying curves and spray-on
finery. To lay your hands on pencil skirts and clinging sweaters, all
in the latest styles but at bargain prices, must have been irresistible.
Since one in-vogue skirt could roll out into multiple outfits with a
change of top, mix-and-match separates were also far friendlier to a
young person’s pocket than fusty old dresses.
The shop was not constantly manic. Mondays were quiet, as
they would be on any high street, and weekdays only picked up at
lunchtimes. But the excitement of a Saturday in Mare Street at fever
pitch itself became a magnet, drawing in yet more customers, and it
created the kind of buzz that advertisers dream of. Every Saturday
there was often a little crowd of customers at the counter, their appe-
tite whetted as they waited and watched others buy, and by the time
they reached the front of the line most would ask to see a number of
items, multiplying sales.

202 I A family business

Bernard may have been at the helm but it was very much the
family’s shop. Clara, Geoffrey and, in due course, Godfrey, gave it
their all. As Bernard said, it was not about being the world’s expert
on something, they were all amateurs; it was a matter of having a go
and getting stuck in. He kitted it out, stocked it, organised and ran it.
With his arty talents, Geoffrey was soon given a ladder and a props
budget and began to help look after the window display. Lorna, who
still managed the Lordship Lane half-shop, took a lesser share in the
excitement, and David, who organised the payroll, tax and other fi-
nancial affairs, did not do anything at the shop itself. But the happi-
ness buoyed them all up, especially Clara, who absolutely loved Mare
Street.
‘We were doing well, at last making a little bit of money,’ said
Bernard. ‘Security, after what we had gone through. The war was over.
The children were home, alive. Everything was great.’

13

Saturday girl

All hands were on deck. But after a couple of manic Saturdays it be-
came clear that the family alone could not keep things shipshape. Ber-
nard placed a card in the window inviting applicants for a Saturday
assistant. Shortly afterwards a sparky young teenager from Hackney
called Adele Blackstone walked in, hoping to make a good impres-
sion. Although she had no way to know it, Adele’s family story echoed
that of the Lewises. Born in 1937, she was the second youngest of five
in a very close-knit family. Her parents, Morris Blackstone and Betsy
Kersh, had been part of the Jewish diaspora, having emigrated from
Russia as children. Settling in the north of England, they met and
married in Sunderland before moving south to a flat in Shaw Place, on
a council estate in Hackney. Adele’s father soon found his place in the
rag trade as a jobbing tailor and presser, often working from home.
Adele remembered watching transfixed as a child as he fashioned re-
veres (collars for suit jackets), ironing them to perfection without the
luxury of a steam iron. ‘He was able to take a glass of water and spray
with his mouth the finest spray. Unbelievable.’

Everyone in the family was musical, enjoying nothing more of
an evening than to gather around the piano as young Adele played, and
sing along with friends brandishing violins and guitars. Sure enough,
show business beckoned for the children. Adele’s eldest brother Myer,
a gifted impressionist who adopted the stage name Michael Black, be-
came a local hero after winning a radio talent contest, The Carroll
Levis Discovery Show, and went on to become a partner in a nightclub

204 I Saturday girl

then a talent agent. Adele’s youngest brother, Don Black, would grow
up to be a song plugger and a comic, then manage Matt Monro, Brit-
ain’s answer to Frank Sinatra in the 1960s. Afterwards he morphed
into an Oscar-winning lyricist, best known for writing songs such as
‘Diamonds are Forever’, ‘To Sir, With Love’ and ‘Born Free’, as well as
several Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals.

Adele did well academically, but despite her sociable home
life, she lacked the confidence to pursue a career in music. She left
school shortly before turning fifteen, when her mother Betsy was di-
agnosed with a brain tumour. Terrified Betsy might die, Adele refused
to leave her side. Eventually the tumour turned out to be benign, but
the school would not take Adele back. So she kicked her heels at home
until one day her sister said it was time to find a job. ‘She told me, “I
was looking in Mare Street, Hackney and there’s a new shop there
called Lewis and they’ve got the most fabulous things, I mean, you’d
just go mad.” So I thought, well, I’ll just wander along there and have
a look and I was quite scared too. It was the first shop any of us had
seen like that.’

She mustered the courage to approach the counter and ask
about the position advertised in the window. Minutes later a hand-
some, well-dressed man came downstairs and next thing she found
herself in an impromptu job interview. A casual enough setting, but
her first impression of Bernard was that he was strict and ‘very direct’,
firing questions at her ‘like bullets’.

He asked pointed questions and obviously wanted a concise,
clear answer. But although I was very shy I found this kind
of inner strength while I was talking to him. I just felt it was
an important moment in my life to be grown up – you know,
I’ve got to answer his questions very correctly.

Saturday girl I 205

He said, ‘Aren’t you at school?’ And I explained that
my mother had been ill and I’d stayed home. And he wanted
to know what school did I go to and I told him I’d got a schol-
arship to go to the John Howard School for Girls in Laura
Place and when you got a scholarship, if you were poor you
got a grant, so we didn’t have to pay for school uniform or
anything. He was interested.

To a fifteen-year-old in a first job interview, anybody posing
grown-up questions might seem intimidating. But her answers res-
onated with Bernard. Within minutes he said, ‘You can come in this
Saturday.’ Nervous as she felt, Adele was not so cowed by the conver-
sation that she did not permit her eyes to wander a little. ‘I was look-
ing at the guy on the stairs who was banging nails in the wall, putting
up half-busts for blouses. I thought he was a window dresser. I sort of
fell for him the minute I saw him.’

As instructed, she turned up at ten minutes to nine the fol-
lowing Saturday morning. ‘I just went in and kept my eyes open and
did what I saw other people doing. It was very, very busy, but they had
their fitments on the wall – more or less like you’d see now in IKEA
– every single item was in a plastic bag and they had to be totally
precise. I started off by making sure they were nice and kept redoing
the display.’

It was too busy even for a novice to stay on the sidelines and
she was soon serving customers, delighting in every minute. ‘I sold
loads and loads of stuff. It was quite theatrical, like being on stage.
Every sale was an award for me.’ She passed the test handsomely and
was invited back as a regular.

For her, there was no mystery to Lewis’s appeal. ‘The styles, the
prices. There was nothing like it. They had sleeveless blouses, which
you never saw, they had skirts with fine pleats, they had things that
you’d never see anywhere else, and at reasonable prices.’

206 I Saturday girl

Clara presided over the shop floor. ‘She thought if we called
her Mrs C nobody would know she was the owner. But she was so
obviously the owner. She was a motherly woman and the business
was her life. They’d had all this bad time and this was a good time. She
was brimming with happiness.’ But Mrs C did not tolerate slackers.
‘She was nice to everybody but she was quick to tell you off if you did
wrong or you were late.’

Five or six assistants manned the counter during busy peri-
ods, and they had to be on the alert at all times. Selling involved an
intricate little dance, first finding the item a customer was interested
in, taking it out of its cubbyhole, removing it from its bag and unfold-
ing it on the counter so the customer could inspect it, then packing
it back and replacing it if she was not going to buy. ‘We were warned
about the stealing and not to have too many things on the counter.’
Clara’s sharp eyes seldom missed a potential thief. ‘She’d say to me,
“Get over there, I don’t like the look of that one.” Yes, she knew totally
what she was doing and she saw everything.’

Miss Black, as they called Adele, was quick to pick everything
up. ‘It was all ducking and diving but being young you can do these
things.’ This did not go unnoticed. After a couple of Saturdays she was
invited to work there full time. She said yes.

*

The Lewises were working flat out. Every so often there would be a
family get-together, but usually when everyone was exhausted. ‘If we
were working late, like on a Saturday night when we did the stock
take, and had to take all the wages out of the till and tot them up, af-
terwards we’d all go out together, Geoffrey, my mother, Godfrey and

Saturday girl I 207

me, to a restaurant on the way home,’ Bernard remembered. ‘I’d go to
Lordship Lane and pick Lorna up and then go across to Bloom’s in
Whitechapel. This was only on occasion – it was convenience rather
than socialising.’

Bloom’s, until 1952 a mainstay of Brick Lane, billed itself
as ‘the most kosher restaurant in Great Britain’, although it was re-
nowned less for its cuisine than its brusque waiters. And this fatigued
taste of the Jewish delicacies that Clara adored was pretty much the
sum total of Lewis family togetherness. Their conviviality consisted
largely in the transacting of business. There were no Sunday lunches,
and parties were rare – nobody, not even Clara, such a devoted moth-
er, had the energy or the living space to host them. Perhaps they also
felt that they saw quite enough of each other already – and by this
stage, Geoffrey and Godfrey could have been forgiven for feeling less
like younger brothers than junior employees.

This established a pattern that would persist. Although the
Lewises’ everyday lives and financial and professional interests would
mesh far more closely than most families’, in many respects business
rather than family intimacy formed the core of the brothers’ relation-
ship.

Although Mare Street rapidly colonised the Lewises’ lives,
plenty of fun could be had there. Miss Black was a case in point. Sweet
sixteen years old, and working five and a half days a week, thanks to
early closing on Thursdays, she could not have been happier, primar-
ily because she was falling in love. Gradually it became apparent that
the feeling was mutual.

The object of her affections, the young man she had spotted
dressing windows during her first job interview, was Geoffrey. Not the
handsomest Lewis, but not dissimilar to a young Dustin Hoffman, she

208 I Saturday girl

found him pleasingly quirky. ‘To me he was mysterious. He was so
unlike my brothers, a bit of a loner, shy. He didn’t show his feelings,
he wasn’t that comfortable with girls. No sisters, the mother was al-
ways working.’ Inevitably, their romance was of the slow-burn variety.
‘A real old-fashioned thing. Lots of glances. I could feel he liked me
and he could feel I liked him. We’d sort of touch when we passed each
other behind the counter then I’d get shivers.’

To intrigue Geoffrey, Adele began playing up to an image of
herself as a naughty young minx, much to Clara’s amusement. ‘We got
on from the word go. She would say to me, “Adele” or “Miss Black,”
whichever I was at the time, “Go across to Sainsbury’s and get six
eggs.” I would deliberately sashay out. She used to laugh.’

Adele was not the only frisky young spirit in Mare Street.
Once it became clear that the fruit shop in Old Street was simply a
drain on resources they decided to pull down the shutters for the last
time. Finally Godfrey could come to Hackney, where he was nominal-
ly in charge of the warehouse. Bernard described the work involved.
‘It was in two or three rooms above the shop. So the merchandise
would come in and he and somebody else perhaps would be working
there, checking it and splitting it up – you know, this is for this shop,
this is for that shop. He organised the deliveries. Then on Saturday or
on busy times he’d be working in the shop.’

If Geoffrey was bashful, Godfrey was the antithesis. ‘He
was kind of like me, he was a little rascal,’ remembered Adele. ‘You
would think of a Norman Wisdom – not in the stupid way but that
cheeky-chappy type. Beautiful blue eyes. He was the one that got all
the girls.’

Other family members were more remote. David seldom
made an appearance and Ruth only helped out from time to time;

Saturday girl I 209

both had plenty to take care of at Lewis, Faith & Co. Bernard, too,
rarely showed his face behind the counter. His hand remained firmly
on the tiller, however, ensuring that they capitalised on every oppor-
tunity.

Stranded in the backwater that was the Lordship Lane Wool
Shop, Lorna only visited Mare Street intermittently, but when she did
she made a deep impression on Adele. ‘We came from the same type
of warm Jewish family. She was my role model from the start. First of
all, she was so welcoming and appreciative. “So happy you’re here.”
We clicked. And then I saw her sweeping the floors, cleaning up. She
was a real worker. I thought, “Oh God, a boss does that? Okay, I’d
better get my hands dirty.”’

The battle for Geoffrey’s heart escalated when Adele learned
that he was a fan of the great outdoors – surely a legacy of his time in
rural Sutton. She decided to make herself out to be exactly the type of
girl he wanted. ‘I never had been sailing and I wasn’t a walker because
I used to want to wear high heels to show off, but I was playing a part.
So I would drop things into conversation, like, “Oh such a lovely day.
I think I’ll go sailing with my sister.” And he said, “Oh, you like sail-
ing?” I said, “I love it.”’

He took the bait and invited her on a boating trip. At which
Adele’s romantic games threatened to become a reality. She was torn:
happy, but nervous about dating the boss’s son. Prudence gained the
upper hand. ‘I decided I didn’t want to lose the job.’ Shrewd suitor that
she was, she asked Clara if it was okay. Her ally replied, ‘Go out and
enjoy yourself.’

More dates followed, and the Blackstones made Geoffrey feel
right at home. ‘My brothers and my sister, we speak all the time, we’re
very close. And that’s what attracted Geoffrey. When he came up to

210 I Saturday girl

my council flat, my mother was there with the wonderful food, she
had a lovely fire burning and he would eat and he’d go and sit in the
armchair and fall asleep in front of the fire.’

Little by little, a future together came to seem inevitable.

14

Overreaching

As Mare Street cantered along, a new set of hurdles rose up. Fore-
most among them was the sheer volume of stock that the shops now
required. Rapidly garnering a good reputation as a customer among
the wholesalers he dealt with (who did not yet suspect that he was
building up a substantial sideline in manufacturing his own wares),
Bernard took care to nurture these relationships. ‘I was always look-
ing for the best stuff but was not dealing with too many suppliers – if
they have what you want, why go elsewhere?’ Once a wholesaler knew
Bernard was good for repeat business, they would seek to protect the
relationship too. ‘And, to some extent, they’re looking after you, yes.
But credit had to be considered. If they give you credit, are you going
to pay?’

The danger of leaning too heavily on one supplier was that
you might end up pushing your luck. This is what happened with his
top supplier, M. Duke & Sons, when Bernard was placing an order
one Thursday afternoon. ‘I was collecting some stuff, and the sales-
man, he was very apologetic, I don’t remember his exact words, but
he said, “You’ve exceeded your credit limit, the stuff you’re taking.”
So I pulled out a cheque book and wrote him a cheque. Now, I didn’t
have the money in the account, but I knew that come Saturday night I
would bank the takings.’ The funds landed just in time.

As business continued to boom, Bernard began thinking big-
ger. He wanted a proper shop of his own. He never lost sight of the

212 I Overreaching

fact that he could be evicted at any point from the Nag’s Head shack,
while the half-shop at Lordship Lane hardly seemed worth the effort,
compared with what they were achieving at Mare Street.

Once again, David put out the call to estate agents and the
brothers began ploughing through particulars. Bernard had a clear
idea what sort of trading position he wanted, and an ever more pre-
cise grasp of how much money a Lewis shop on the right pitch could
be expected to take. This made it easier to assess what key money
they could reasonably afford to pay for a lease, and how quickly a new
branch might pay for itself.

The pair spent many a Saturday morning standing on the
pavement outside prospective premises, eyeing likely customers
traipsing past, assessing potential trade. If they looked rather peculiar
– two young men ogling young women – they did not care. They had
business to do and before it could be done, they needed the facts. ‘If
you’re going to take a shop you need to do all the possible research,
and end up with an estimate of its potential turnover. There can be
a lot of footfall who are not shoppers. They are office workers go-
ing home, or they could be out for food. They’re not after clothes. So
you’ve got to understand the locality and the customer profile and all
that sort of thing, but once you’ve done that you can say, “How busy is
it compared with that or this?”’

In contrast to these positive developments, Bernard’s home
life was changing. He and Lorna had been married barely a year when
she suffered what he later recognised as a serious bout of depression.
First she stopped smiling, then she stopped talking. Yet in every other
respect she carried on as usual.

This period lasted three months. At the time Bernard was
confounded. ‘I wasn’t aware of anything that might have upset her,
but I wondered whether it might have been my fault. Then suddenly
one day, she had a smile, she was fine, back to normal.’

Overreaching I 213

The dark cloud gone, the couple carried on as if nothing had
happened. They never discussed it and Bernard confided in no one.
He would not have known what to say; the word depression was to
him only a term used in economics. So he told himself simply that it
had been a mood, that it was past, and put it at the back of his mind –
easy enough when there was so much else to think about.

Not long afterwards she fell pregnant. ‘She was happy and
good then,’ Bernard remembered. Then she lost the baby. Within
months she learned that she was expecting another child. This time
around, celebrations were put on hold and Lorna retired for thirteen
weeks of bed rest to prevent another miscarriage, a precaution taken
upon doctors’ advice and quite commonplace in those days, when
mothers were routinely made to feel responsible if their babies did not
reach full term. One can imagine her state of mind during those three
months, with her mother living in the flat to look after her.

Once the dangerous phase was deemed to be past, she re-
turned to Lordship Lane, back in the shop, day after day, with a sales
assistant to help her. ‘But we would have been very, very careful.’ Still
so young, Lorna may well have experienced the pregnancy as if her
body were a ticking bomb. Meanwhile Bernard, his sense of responsi-
bility magnified by impending fatherhood, worked harder than ever.

The long wait ended in a classic 1950s birth. On 1 April Ber-
nard dropped Lorna off at King’s College Hospital in Denmark Hill
and drove home. The obstetrician, Sir John Peel, who had attended at
the births of all the Queen’s children, phoned Bernard at two o’clock
in the morning.

He said, ‘You’ve got a son.’ And I think I said, ‘Thank you
very much,’ and went back to sleep. The idea of being present
at the birth . . . It was really different to today. There were
visiting times, because I remember driving my car like mad
to the hospital and somebody objected because I cut him up.

214 I Overreaching

I remember a bit of an altercation, but I was in too much of
a hurry to stay and argue. It was lunchtime before I was al-
lowed in to see them.

Their son was a lusty, healthy boy and they called him Leon-
ard, in tribute to Bernard’s father. After a week in hospital, mother and
baby returned home, where a nursery nurse was on hand to provide
support. Neither a care nor a penny was spared and Bernard could
not have been prouder, although his time with the baby was severely
curtailed by business. ‘I would see him on Sunday, and night time.’
Not very hands on, but then in 1954 few fathers were. And Bernard
had other compelling ventures afoot, competing for his attention.

David had unearthed a promising new shop in Tooting, south
London. When the brothers went to inspect, it appeared larger from
the outside than their Mare Street branch – a slight illusion, because
it stood on the corner of a busy junction opposite Tooting Broadway
Underground station, affording an expansive window display. In fact
it was smaller inside than Mare Street, set over two sales floors. Still,
it was just the right sort of place with the right kind of trade, and the
brothers negotiated a premium at the right price – which turned out
to be the highest that they could afford.

In went the fitters to kit it out in the latest style. Double-
height skirt rails around the walls, hung with garments, were topped
by a pelmet and concealed lighting, everything on hand for them to
browse at their leisure rather than hang around, waiting to be served.

Within weeks of Leonard’s arrival, the new Tooting branch of
Lewis was ready to fling open its doors. This time the sign above the
entrance featured another, separate decorative ‘L’ . ‘I remember some-
body saying to me that L was Leonard. “That’s your little L.”’

Overreaching I 215

All that remained was to find someone to manage the place.
Bernard did not look far, because by now the Levy brothers’ and
Spencer sisters’ partnership had folded, leaving Rene and Lena, the
younger of Lorna’s sisters, out of work. At the time they were living
out Godfrey’s nightmare, running a penurious stall selling knitting
wool on Petticoat Lane market. It was not hard to tempt Rene to run
Tooting instead. Meanwhile Lena found a job at Martin Ford, another
chain of women’s clothing stores, which would soon become Lewis’s
fiercest rival.

If Bernard was nervous the night before Tooting opened, he
slept more soundly than before Mare Street, even with a baby in the
house. His confidence was not misplaced. Once again, the shop was
a smash hit from day one. A story found its way into the local news-
paper about the crowds around the windows blocking the pavements,
bringing complaints from the police and neighbouring shopkeep-
ers, who must have ached with envy. In the end the council installed
guard rails to stop pedestrians from being elbowed into the road by
impatient girls waiting for their next fashion fix.

There was no denying it, the family were making money, but
that did not mean they were flush, let alone living the high life. The
degree to which their finances were strained is illustrated by a rather
sharp manoeuvre of Bernard’s. ‘After I opened Tooting, I didn’t have
the money to pay for the shopfitting. So I went down to the shopfitter’s
office in Mitcham and arranged to pay him in staggered instalments.’
It was brazen but effective. The man went along, albeit reluctantly. ‘He
wasn’t happy about it, but what’s he going to do? That was the only
way he could be paid.’

Yet this gamble pales in comparison with a stunt that David
was about to pull. He had taken into his accountancy practice a part-

216 I Overreaching

ner, Gordon Bloom, a painstaking researcher whose skills comple-
mented David’s strong commercial instincts. The Lilliputian office
at Piccadilly Mansions could not accommodate them both, so Da-
vid put out feelers for somewhere bigger and his friend Albert Harris
brought word of a marvellous house at 13 Harley Street, available on
a 900-plus year lease. The deal even included a mews house to its rear,
where the carriage, horses and coachman would have dwelt when it
was first built. At a premium of £20,000, with the annual rent fixed at
£13,000 for the remaining 900-plus years of the lease, it was signifi-
cantly larger and costlier than anything David could afford. But he
did not let these details stand in the way of a good opportunity. Then,
as now, Harley Street was Britain’s most prestigious street for private
medical practitioners, and David decided that the financial risk was
outweighed by the revenues he could reap if he sublet the surplus
rooms.

Somehow or other this most creative of accountants rustled
up enough key money for the premium and the lease became his per-
sonal property. To celebrate he commissioned a new batch of smart
embossed headed stationery. Lewis, Faith & Co. was no more. The
new brass nameplate read Lewis, Bloom & Co., and David strolled
into a lucrative new side business as landlord to the plummy end of
the quack trade. To cap off his happiness, in July his wife Ruth was
delivered of their first baby. The child’s name said it all: Julian (for the
month) Harley (for the house) Lewis.

The gamble would pay off. As David’s accountancy practice
expanded, gradually it absorbed more and more of those rooms as
one then two additional partners joined the firm. In 2013, the lease
of 13 Harley Street was sold for a premium of over £6 million – a
mere 300 times David’s original outlay. Not a bad investment for a
frustrated businessman manqué.

Overreaching I 217

*

1954 could scarcely have been a more momentous or demanding
year, but each high was balanced by a low. When Leonard was a few
months old, Lorna fell ill once again, experiencing an even more seri-
ous breakdown. Bernard took her abroad, hoping to snap her out of it,
but the holiday, while a distraction, was not to provide a cure.

Bernard did his best, calling in every medical resource he
could find. But he had scant pause to reflect. He may not have been
obliged to rise at five to go to the market, but in every other respect
he was far busier than when he had run the greengrocer’s. ‘A normal
trading day was nine till six but when the shop closed you put the
merchandise in the boot of the car and took it round to the other
shops on the way home. Living in Crystal Palace, you would go to
Tooting on the way home from Hackney and drop the merchandise
off. Have a key, open the door and leave it in there.’

So much for clothing offering an easier option. The truth was
that Bernard liked hard work. One suspects it also provided a distrac-
tion from worrying about Lorna. He knew how to ensure they had
a better life in material terms, but understanding how to make her
better was beyond him, as it was beyond most of the growing number
of specialists they would consult.

Still, the business he could control. He trained an unwavering
eye on the future, and there could be only one direction of travel:
expansion. Every penny flowing into the business was ploughed back
in. Bernard may not have seen this strategy as risky, yet in effect, day
after day he was betting not only his shirt but everyone’s homes, on
the company’s success – with the exception of David, who had his
accountancy practice to fall back on.

218 I Overreaching

The aim was to achieve security for each member of his fam-
ily, so Bernard resolved that once they had recouped enough money
to cover Tooting’s set-up costs the next goal would be to save up for a
shop for Geoffrey. But designating the shop in his brother’s name did
not imply that Geoffrey would run it independently. Just as with Mare
Street and Clara’s nominal ownership, the new site would be the latest
addition to a group managed and led by Bernard. After the next shop
was up and running he would then seek out an equivalent premises
for Godfrey. And that would be the end of it, since there would be no
need to find a shop for David. At this stage nobody could envisage
how wide their horizon or high their ambitions would grow.

Geoffrey and Godfrey, now aged twenty-four and twenty-one,
were not consulted on this, their paths were defined by their brothers’
choices, their junior status encapsulated in the modest financial ar-
rangements that were made for them:

Geoffrey and Godfrey were allowed to take £3 per week. I re-
member that once Godfrey took £5 and was very upset when
he was told off by David. I don’t remember how their subse-
quent drawings, salaries or cars were arranged. By contrast,
my drawings and car were entirely up to me with no discus-
sion. David and I took out what we needed without reference
to each other, although I don’t think David took much.

Their property search continued, aided by a clicker counter, an
ingenious new gadget acquired by David. He and Bernard spent many
more Saturdays hanging around on pavements, totting up promising
footfall as it trotted past, their eyes peeled for not too well-heeled,
not too old, but potentially fashion-conscious feet. What a spectacle
they must have presented: David with his unlined face, wise eyes and
carefully cultivated moustache, attempting to ape a man of twice his
years; Bernard, smart and traditional – both staring at women with

Overreaching I 219

the disinterested countenances of shepherds appraising their flock.
Eventually they identified a good enough site, on 134 Kilburn High
Road. Although fractionally larger than Tooting, its premium was
nowhere near as great – a boon, reflecting the uncertain economic
climate. ‘The investment would have been significant, yes, and im-
portant to us, but it wouldn’t have taken an awful lot of money to
get it.’ Geoffrey was put in charge of training staff and when the shop
opened for trading, he was the supervisor.

15

The great shop hunt

Week after week, the numbers coming through the cash registers sent
the same resounding message: keep going. It became clear that a Lew-
is shop in the right position could rapidly earn back its set-up costs,
especially if there was no premium on the lease. Provided that they
could sustain a stock supply, they were in a position to win big.
Bernard realised that one more shop would not do it; they
should go for several. The more the group grew, the greater its econo-
mies of scale, the larger might be the profits. Far from feeling uplifted
by dreams of ease and riches, though, he would feel a heavy weight
settle on his shoulders:

Probably not then, but I realised pretty early on that here
was the opportunity of changing the fortunes of the family,
more or less permanently. Taking us out from . . . well, we had
seen my parents live with the desperation and hopelessness
of poverty. Now what was available to us – financial securi-
ty, looking after housing, looking after health, looking after
education. And not only that, if you’re living from hand to
mouth as a small business person you spend a lot of your
time making ends meet instead of running your business –
you’re stealing a bit here to give a bit there, keeping that one
happy by keeping this one short. So how did you get ahead,
when all that energy is diverted? As soon as you’ve got a bit
of money in the bank you don’t do that, you can spend your
time running your business. Or doing what you want. And
this was what I was aiming for. It was in my hands. I was the
person that was able to do it because I was running the show.
I remember thinking of this opportunity as a duty,
something I must do for the family. I could not let it slip for
want of application.

The great shop hunt I 221

His personal inclinations could never be placed before the
greater good. It was time to step up the shop hunt, expanding the
search to the Greater London area and towns reasonably close to the
capital, places where they thought they understood the customer. But
they kept crashing into obstacles. Foremost was the dearth of good
sites. Property development sputtered on miserably in the face of
continued shortages. Nobody was building new shopping centres, so
the opportunities for people to spend their cash lagged well behind
rising consumer demand. On the upside, this meant that great shops
like Lewis thrived, but promising premises went fast and rents began
climbing. Even so, a premium was not invariably required to secure
a lease. ‘You could have had just the shop fitting and the stock to pay
for.’

Once they had vetted a suitable shop, the next hurdle was to
persuade the landlord that the Lewis business was worthy of the site.
This presented the brothers with something of a chicken-and-egg
problem. ‘Landlords would want a good tenant and to be seen as that,
your business had to be of a certain size. So when you were small
you couldn’t necessarily get the shop you wanted. Then you have to
compromise, taking what you can get. Even if it’s not 100 per cent,
nevertheless you have to do it.’ Otherwise the business’s growth would
be handicapped by the paradox that they could not grow further until
they were large enough to look reliable. Another challenge, then, was
to realise the potential of less prime sites, drawing new trade to sec-
ondary locations by offering customers something different and, in
many areas, unprecedented. Then they could move to better premises
in due course, as their reputation improved enough to convince the
bigger and better landlords to take a punt on the Lewis covenant.
When clinching new shops David was the dealmaker. But
when it came to judging how much a site would be worth, the estimate
of the turnover was the deciding factor. That was Bernard’s job, since

222 I The great shop hunt

he dealt so closely with the merchandise and customers. Bidding for
a new property, David was sometimes inclined to be less bullish than
Bernard. ‘But we always reached an agreement. David quite properly
didn’t like to pay above market value because if the shop didn’t work
out for us it would be difficult to offload it. I recognised that point of
course, but sometimes thought that this is our sort of town and we
could do well there.’
All four brothers gathered for weekly board meetings, usu-
ally on a Tuesday evening, at either David’s home or Bernard’s. But
although David’s carefully documented minutes of these meetings
convey an impression of high seriousness, in reality they were relaxed
discussions, to keep everyone abreast of what was going on. David be-
came company chairman, but there was little significance in the posi-
tion in terms of seniority. ‘David is the accountant and it was conve-
nient for him to sign the documents which crossed his desk and this
sort of thing. But even right up to the time David died, although he
always was chairman, we never ran it like a conventional chairman
and board. It’s always been run informally like a family business.’
The informality extended to the way that the board reached de-
cisions: always by consensus, never by vote. As David later remarked,
there was no need to debate their business plan. They would expand
and expand, and each brother knew what was required to make it hap-
pen.
Yet this emphasis on consensus might have been less egalitari-
an than it appeared. When you do not have the formal mechanism of
a vote then it is essential that you speak persuasively if you want your
voice to carry weight. But Godfrey and Geoffrey were young and sig-
nificantly less sure of their ground than their brothers. ‘Normally they
were both quiet,’ recalled Bernard. ‘If we decide to take a shop there
has to be agreement. David and I would agree. Would Geoffrey and
Godfrey have input? They wouldn’t disagree, but usually they would
not have seen the property.’

Six decades later, rereading David’s painstaking minutes,

The great shop hunt I 223

Bernard wondered, ‘What were they all for?’ There were notes about
modifying stock control systems; takings slips; overtime policies;
points-based bonus schemes; the commissioning of paper bags; em-
ployees’ record cards; staff discounts for garments worn in the shops
(one penny per shilling for nylons, twopence for clothes), and even
discussions about how to phrase notices instructing customers in the
use of tissues in fitting rooms.

An exceptionally neat person, given to turning and straight-
ening a pen during conversation, Bernard saw these records more as a
reflection of his brother’s personality than any practical necessity. ‘He
thought it was the right thing to do, it seemed official, but the business
wasn’t really like that, discussing every single detail. I just got on with
it.’

Although the minutes may have been important to the busi-
ness, from a historical perspective they offer a step-by-step narrative
of the company’s early years as the brothers improvised their way to
a retail chain, with each phase of expansion leading to greater for-
malisation, standards and systems. (By contrast, Bernard’s attitude to
record keeping was a biographer’s nightmare. ‘I wouldn’t have kept
any of these things. I have an archive. We all have. But every now and
then I clear, I throw everything away. David didn’t. David’s got com-
prehensive files.’) Evidently the paperwork meant something to their
younger brothers too. In one instance, David recorded Geoffrey’s ‘dis-
sent’ with the minutes of the previous week. The minutes also reveal
how tasks were assigned to Geoffrey and Godfrey, far more often than
to David or Bernard. Perhaps they volunteered for these jobs, but it
cements the impression of the younger pair as more managed than
managing. In such minor differences the fundamentally lopsided
dynamics of the business are clear. As Bernard put it, he managed
himself. ‘It was my business, I started it and I ran it.’

224 I The great shop hunt

As for Clara, the putative owner of Mare Street, there is no
hint that she wished for a greater part in running the company be-
yond her very active role as Hackney’s queen bee, Mrs C, presiding
over her buzzing hive of young helpers. Not one board meeting did
she attend, and as far as Bernard could recall she never blanched at
any of the suggestions that her sons put to her. She had every faith in
her boys and they would see to it that she did not go without. Another
note records that she was given £3,000, the sum originally invested in
Mare Street from the sale of her house on Montrose Avenue.

By no means did the payment indicate that she was being pen-
sioned off. ‘She carried on going to Hackney for a long time. Oh yes,
of course! She enjoyed it.’ Not just the bustle and the gossip, Bernard
emphasised, although these would have been diversion enough, but
also for the status. ‘It gave her a position in life. She was Mrs Lewis,
you know, who had a shop on the high road.’

In due course the brothers renamed the shops Lewis Separates,
commissioning standardised fascia and trendy neon signs for each
branch. This new identity made sense, because their focus on skirts,
blouses, tops, knitwear – so young and au courant, unlike stuffy old
dresses – was what set them apart. ‘There were no separates before the
war, just a company called The Scotch Wool and Hosiery, and Dor-
othy Perkins, they sold knitwear, and Richards shops. But they were
selling dresses and coats and things like that. All the other separates
were sold in gown shops – they took in some blouses and sweaters as
a sideline. We were the first to specialise. We had no preconceptions
about how clothes should be sold. That was our advantage.’

The fruit shop at 183 Old Street continued to stand empty,
but eventually they found a buyer for the lease for a small premium.
This might have been a moment for sentiment, severing as it did the
Lewises’ last tie to the business their parents had fought so hard to
sustain, and to the basement stock room where once they slept on

The great shop hunt I 225

mattresses, amid rats and mice and lice, with only a weekly trip to the
Hoxton bathhouse to sluice away the grime. But the family shed no
tears. Bernard also wound down his greengrocer’s. He had a business
to build, and a path to carve to the prosperous future that was begin-
ning to seem possible.

Their quest for premises continued, but when a good spot
came up, often they lost out in a bidding war if established traders
entered the fray. Frustration began to grate, until it dawned on them
that they had a chance to secure a corking new shop. They just had
to create it from an under-exploited asset that sat right under their
noses: the rust-speckled shack at the Nag’s Head.

Despite its homespun appearance, the Wool Shop had always
performed strongly, its turnover almost triple that of the half-shop on
Lordship Lane. The question became: how much better could a prop-
er shop do on that spot? The brothers resolved to find out.

David and Bernard hatched a plan. First they approached the
landlord offering to buy the freehold of the bombsite, encompassing
not just their two adjacent spots, but all eight shops that had been
decimated along that stretch of the road. What the site needed, they
reckoned, was an office block: the upper floors for offices, the lower
for shops, with a plum site reserved for Lewis Separates.
There was only one flaw in their scheme: no money to pay for
it. But David already had a proven talent for conjuring up cash. He
put on his soberest three-piece suit and took their proposition to the
Prudential Assurance Company. If the Pru supplied the readies, in
return the Lewises would secure the site and build the block, on the
condition that they could lease back the shop. After giving the idea
due consideration, the Pru said yes.
You have to admire the chutzpah. Thus far the brothers’ ex-
perience in property development extended to Bernard hand-craft-
ing two wooden sheds. But they had the contacts to help execute the

226 I The great shop hunt

scheme. The deal done, in came the builders. Within a year or two
they had a purpose-built shop, at a good rent, in an ideal spot. ‘It was
a buy and sell simultaneously,’ Bernard explained, ‘with the lease of
the shop to us part of the deal at a rent of £950 for a ninety-nine-year
lease with no rent review, a deal unimaginable today. The shop was
recently sold back to the landlords for over £250,000.’ The Nag’s Head
experiment would eventually seed the idea that they could do more
inventive things with property – which, unlike fast-moving fashion,
seemed a relatively solid place to put money. In this, and in numer-
ous tax and company structuring innovations, David’s contribution
would prove invaluable. It was not simply a question of knowledge
and imagination. David also knew how to network, and was seen
as a professional who could be relied upon. ‘We were shopkeepers,’
said Bernard. ‘He had clients who were in the property business, and
would have picked up how to do things from them. Perhaps acting for
them also facilitated things for us too.’

The pace in the shops kept accelerating. Whatever role some-
one might have nominally, everybody was too busy nipping up and
downstairs, sorting what needed to be sorted, to get hung up on their
official job title. The instant that goods were delivered they had to be
unpacked, ticketed and allocated, with a sharp watch for the hottest
stock so that Bernard could leap on a bestseller and order in more to
keep the trend going, as strong and for as long as could be. The under-
standing, trust and mutual sense of ownership that came of being a
family infused extra energy into everything they did. But the business
was rapidly outgrowing them. Running out of family members to fill
every significant position, they started to take on administrative staff.
‘It was resolved that Mr Bernard engage a full-time window dresser,’
recorded David in the minutes. Note the elevated title: ‘Mr Bernard’
is how staff began to refer to him, while his younger brothers were
now ‘Mr Geoffrey’ and ‘Mr Godfrey’. This demarcated a respectful

The great shop hunt I 227

distance between the brothers and their employees; it would last until
Bernard’s closest staff began calling him Mr B, just as Clara’s shop
girls called her Mrs C.
They carried on for some time using a freelance window
dresser. Mr Berenson, a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia, bore the
indelible mark of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in the number
tattooed on his arm. ‘I remember him very well,’ said Bernard, adding
of Berenson’s wartime incarceration, ‘We were quite friendly, but I
didn’t talk to him about his time in the concentration camp just five
or six years earlier. Not once was it mentioned by either of us. I didn’t
know what to say; any words I could think of would be too facile. Ev-
eryone had seen in the cinema the newsreels of the camps, seen in the
newspapers the photographs, and read about the conditions and what
had gone on inside. We could imagine what it had been like for them.
As I remember he was here alone so you can speculate what happened
to his family.’

*

On Boxing Day 1954 the brothers gathered for their weekly meeting
at Clara, Geoffrey and Godfrey’s flat in Park Court.
With Tooting going great guns, everyone agreed to modernise
the Hackney shop to make it fully self-service too. Geoffrey was tasked
with co-ordinating the makeover under Bernard’s direction, planning
and costing alterations. The counter would shrink to just a cash desk,
and the cubbyholes and glass display cabinets were to be retired. In-
stead double rails would run around the walls, allowing customers to
help themselves.
This layout was more efficient, liberating staff, but that was
not the primary reason for changing it, explained Bernard. ‘More
important was the tempo and the atmosphere, switching to free and

228 I The great shop hunt

easy self-selection, putting it all out there, getting away from the po-
sition whereby someone comes in and you say, “Yes, madam, can I
help you?”’ Unlike the dreaded ‘madam shops’, as gown and mantle
outfitters were known in the trade, Lewis Separates was a place where
style-conscious young women could feel at home – women without
much money, who wanted to be grown-ups but emphatically did not
want to be called madam. ‘That’s how we grew. Other people in the
business were traditional. We were young and vibrant and everything
new that came in, we were in the vanguard: with the merchandise,
with everything. We brought in a totally different atmosphere.’

As they prepared to expand the business, Bernard decided
to sell the half-shop at Lordship Lane. Although it made money, the
profits were too meagre to justify its administrative burden. Relieving
Lorna of the pressure of running the place may have been another
consideration. The closure demonstrated Bernard’s ruthless prag-
matism, determined to train his efforts where they would serve him
most. ‘Get more and more complex and your time, your creative en-
ergy, can end up being spent on the wrong things. Sometimes you’ve
got to say to yourself, “Walk away from this, I’ve got more important
things to do.”’

Streamlining the shops was one thing. Equally important was
refining the backstairs operation to keep up with demand. Luckily
the new Kilburn premises came with two large floors upstairs. Since
it was closer to both Hackney and Tooting than either branch was to
each other, it made sense to relocate the back office to Kilburn’s sec-
ond floor, placing the stock room on the first.
As ever, Bernard’s personal requirements for his new work-
space were almost comically modest, with two tables, chairs and a
steel cabinet the full complement of furniture he required to run the
group. Not an inch of space stood idle. On a little half-landing, at a
turn in the stairs above the stock room, Bernard placed a table for his

The great shop hunt I 229

buying office. ‘I used to see people there.’
But if they were going to open more shops, and have the
wherewithal to supply them efficiently, he knew that they needed to
think even bigger. He saw a chance to enlarge the stock room into
a sizeable warehouse, if they could incorporate the first floor of the
neighbouring shop on 136 Kilburn High Road, then occupied by a
branch of the jewellers Saqui & Lawrence. Since gems and watches
take up little space, in return for a generous consideration Saqui &
Lawrence’s property manager was more than happy to cede the Lew-
ises the extra square footage, as well as the rear of the ground floor,
affording a larger goods reception for Lewis Separates’ deliveries. No
time was lost in sending in the builders and soon the new warehouse
was humming with activity.

16

Cut, make and trim

It was another typical day in the Kilburn buying office. Bernard
sat quietly behind his desk as an increasingly despondent supplier
showed him sample after sample. To which the answer each time, af-
ter a pause, was an implacable no. Eventually the salesman threw up
his arms in frustration.

‘Well, tell me what you want and I’ll get it made for you.’
After the man left, Bernard considered his words. ‘I remember
thinking, “Yes, I can tell him what I want. So what do I need him for?
Why the hell am I relying on these people when I know what I want? I
can do it myself.” I was already doing blouses and skirts and that then
triggered me to do everything else.’
Being at the mercy of suppliers did not sit well with Bernard’s
passionate self-reliance. What is more, as he realised that afternoon,
he already possessed the knowledge that was most vital to every mer-
chant. ‘Because I’m in touch with my customer I know what the cus-
tomer wants, whereas if you get the manufacturer, the wholesaler, the
retailer and the customer, the line of communication between the
manufacturer and the customer is interrupted. And once you recog-
nise you had the knowledge then it’s a question of getting it done –
getting it to the customers in the most efficient way.’ If all went well he
could bypass most of the supply chain, radically shortening the dis-
tance between his detailed knowledge of what his customers wanted
and his ability to provide it at a bargain price.
One of Bernard’s favourite sayings, which he would pass on to
his youngest son, was that ‘the fish rots from the head first’. That day

Cut, make and trim I 231

he appreciated how profoundly the reverse is also true: the head leads
the swim. If he reaped the data being delivered into his tills more sys-
tematically and transmitted that information to the business’s manu-
facturing brain – himself – then appropriate stock could flow faster
and cheaper, shedding costs at every turn. It required the wherewith-
al, organisational skills and insight to identify the right styles, pick the
right cloth, manufacture it cost-effectively and marshal the deliveries
– none of them minor matters. But Bernard was undaunted. The time
had come to plunge into the cut, make and trim business and make it
a central aspect of their operation rather than simply a sideline.
His first step was to go out and hire an in-house designer. Sig-
nificant though this woman’s appointment was, he could not recall
her name. Then again, personality was not required in this position.
Far from an auteur like Coco Chanel, dreaming up ideas, the in-house
designer had to perform a simple task: sketch ideas according to Ber-
nard’s instructions. Better yet, she would have the technical know-
how to translate designs into patterns, giving a more accurate idea of
the cloth required, which would make it easier to estimate the cost per
garment – invaluable information for when Bernard came to negoti-
ate with outdoor makers. From this time on, skirts, jersey jumpers,
jackets, coats, jerkins, and any other fancy that could be made us-
ing fabric, scissors and sewing machines, would be manufactured by
Lewis Separates.
Bernard’s drive to simplify served the company well. It was all
about focusing on the key design component that made a garment
fashionable – that certain something which would lure customers
into picking it up – while at the same time shearing off costly flour-
ishes.

You can get a fashion look. If you want to get it mass-market-
ed and get the price down what you do is look at the bits in
that garment that aren’t essential to its appeal and cut them

232 I Cut, make and trim

out but you’ve still got the essentials of it. You’re looking at
something, thinking, ‘What’s this about?’
Maybe a blouse has a complicated pocket and new
shaped collar and a new cloth, so you can look at it and think
this is about the collar and cloth, not that complicated pock-
et, we can drop the pocket and give it to a factory that makes
simple garments and so has a lower making price and it will
sell better because it is cheaper.

He denied taking any artistic pleasure from this creative pro-
cess. ‘No, it wasn’t that sort of designing. It was product to sell. Satis-
fying when it sells.’ For him, the market dictated everything, although
he conceded that he may have possessed an extra ingredient. ‘You do
develop an eye. You get to a stage where you can pick a winner – you
can see, that might sell.’ He even had one or two original ideas. ‘Let
me tell you about the thing I invented,’ he said with relish. ‘There was
something called plush, like cotton or rayon, brushed on one side, like
fleece. I designed a top with dolman sleeves and a collar. At that time
there was a popular type of embroidery, all fluffy wool, and I used it to
create two small poodles on the chest connected by a gold chain. And
we sold enormous quantities.’
When asked if either his mother or the growing number of
girlfriends and female employees in his circle had any influence over
the styles he championed, Bernard smiled. ‘Not at all.’ On the face
of things, this may seem surprising. It is not as if he had extensive
experience in the company of fashion-forward young females, apart
from Lorna, who always took great care of her appearance when she
was well. And Bernard had no axe to grind on questions of style.
The cultural power inherent in mass-market fashion meant little to
him. Never would he nourish a desire to dictate the height of wom-
en’s hemlines, never mind to promote a particular body type. Indeed,
although his curiosity about almost every subject was hard to slake,
the underlying reason why one particular garment might attract more
customers than another held little fascination for him. For instance,

Cut, make and trim I 233

when it was suggested that separates might have come into vogue af-
ter the war for economic reasons – because women could blend them
into multiple outfits, making separates both cheaper and more playful
than dresses – he replied, ‘I’ve got no idea, I don’t get involved in that.
No, I didn’t have a theory.’
Why such lack of interest? It was not so much that he did not
care as that if he permitted himself to be diverted by such consider-
ations or swayed by personal taste, then it might have clouded his
ability to deliver what the market desired. The business rested on a
simple foundation: discover what people want and sell it, as quickly
and cheaply as possible. Numbers were his lantern, but if he had a
guiding principle, it was simply ‘Assume nothing.’
How did he manage this? By playing the part of an anthro-
pologist, applying the lessons that he had learned minding his grand-
mother’s stall on Rathbone Street market.

I remember in our Liverpool shop once, a long time ago,
standing there leaning against a rail watching the people, and
thinking, ‘What am I doing here? I’ve seen everything I want
and I’m just standing here looking at people.’ But that’s what
you’re doing. You’re getting an understanding of the custom-
er into your bones, so that you can instinctively give them
the right stuff.
You’ve got to identify with the customer. You’ve got
to go there and you’ve got to develop a feeling for your mar-
ket. If you don’t, you lose touch, and one day you’ll find out
you’re failing.

‘Our customers need to be stimulated,’ he told the Drapers
Record in 1962:

They buy a blouse if there is a good reason to do
so. If blouses are not new, then they will switch to
shoes, handbags, trousers if these reveal more style.

234 I Cut, make and trim

[Professional] buyers cannot go against the trend of the mar-
ket . . . We buy on merit. We always go for the merchandise
in demand; then, when the style is right, we set out to be
competitive in price. So the first necessity was to gauge pub-
lic demand and give customers just what they were looking
for. A bread-and-butter blouse selling at one pound would be
beaten hands down by a fashion right blouse at twenty-five
shillings.

Buying cheap stock was not the point: it was about buying the
right stock, then making it cheaper. In 2015 he amplified these early
thoughts.

There’s a section of the clothing business which sells what I
would have called body covering. Some people will say, ‘I’ve
got to get a new sweater. That’s nice, I’ll have that.’ Where-
as our customers would think, ‘This is a new colour, there’s
new-style sweaters, I must have one of those.’ So we were
trading in novelty, excitement, and I think we always had that
idea. Some other businesses would say, ‘What sweater can I
get out there for five pounds?’ I would start the other way
round and would say, ‘What’s fashionable?’ And then, ‘What
sort of thing is right for our customer?’ Then I would do the
best offer. You do the best deal you can but first and foremost
the garment must be right.

Part of this skill at attuning himself to what would work for
Lewis Separates’ customers stemmed from his recognition that in
fashion, context is all:

I can remember when I had my office upstairs in the shop,
maybe as early as Hackney, I could be looking at a style and
frequently I would take it downstairs into the shop, put it on
a bust, put it in the window, and stand and look at it as a cus-
tomer. In the trade there’s something called hanger appeal. In
other words, it’s got to look good hanging up. Another thing
was window appeal. It doesn’t apply so much today, but back