Everything needed to understand how the British shop can be found in Fleet Street's reports about what the Duchess of Cambridge wears. Before she was even engaged, newspapers like the Daily Mail had dubbed her "the people's princess," and not for the charitable works that earned her late mother-in-law, Diana, the moniker, but because of her habit of donning affordable fashion brands such as Topshop and Whistles. Indeed, regular and appreciative editorials point out that she is beloved as a style icon (dubious) because she shops the high street, most often Zara. Tsars – they're just like us!
The same principle is in effect during Harrods' annual sale. While luxury retailers in other parts of the world quietly tuck markdown items into a corner, Britain's luxury department store takes a different tack: Each January, it conscripts a boldface celebrity to cut the ribbon, opening the sale with fanfare while ushering in shoppers who aren't necessarily regulars of the posh haunt. In short, it makes bargain shopping a grand event.
The British affection for mixing the high with the low is equally apparent on London's high street – the metonymous term for the main public and commercial area in any English town – where different retail philosophies, not to mention class divisions, really converge.
There is the 308-year-old Piccadilly matron Fortnum & Mason, known for cozy afternoon teas and luxury hampers; the H&Ms and Zaras; and, of course, the multidepartment emporia such as Harrods and Harvey Nichols, which boast the latest luxury designers in gleaming glass and marble display cases – and where, of course, the hobby of spelunking for deals among the designer pieces plays out.
That habit – the one Patsy and Edina honed over the course of 20 years at Harvey "it's fabulous, honey sweetie darling" Nicks – was originally imported to late-Edwardian England in 1909 by American-born Harry Selfridge (currently played by Jeremy Piven in a series melodrama based on Lindy Woodhead's biography Shopping, Seduction and Mr. Selfridge). The retailer's radical notion of shopping for pleasure, not necessity – along with his penchant for publicity and self-promotion – were learned at Chicago's famously sumptuous Marshall Field's department store, which helped fashion the American middle class. Selfridges, too, was aimed at the egalitarian middle, but it also made an effort to appeal to the working class by way of special promotions and flash sales.
If that sounds a bit like noblesse oblige, it was – and yet, it was Selfridges itself that would eventually make a retail play that opened the high street to fast fashion, and shoppers of all budgets along with it.
In the 1960s, shopping became a serious (and unisex) leisure pursuit in Swinging London. It was the colourful independent shops on Carnaby Street, not Selfridges or Harrods, that produced the mod fashions that clothed the country's biggest youth movement. Those defining garments were locally designed, were hardly inexpensive and quickly became a uniform. It didn't take long for the big department stores to get in on the game. In 1966, Selfridges launched the in-store Miss Selfridge boutique on the high street, which specialized in younger, brighter, more affordable looks than those its flagship was known for. It was so successful that Miss Selfridge was spun off into a chain – and this nearly a decade before Zara, the queen of fast and youthful fashion, launched in Spain.
But it was Selfridge's spiritual heir, George Davies, who went a step further, pushing prices even lower. In 1981, the marketing and retail whiz founded the fashion chain Next, another staple of the British high street, before launching his eponymous, inexpensive and of-the-moment-driven George clothing label within the aisles of Asda, the mid-range national supermarket chain (sound familiar?), paving the way for a slew of fast-fashion shops that now flank the designer-stuffed department stores on the high street, not only in England but everywhere.
That's not necessarily a good thing. In Britain, the taste for mixing high with low has accelerated to such a degree that what Harry Selfridge would label 'low' now looks like the middle, given how far prices have fallen. Hearteningly, however, a wave of British activists might be first in putting on the brakes. A bold group of them have christened April 24 – the anniversary of the Rana Plaza clothing-factory tragedies in Bangladesh – Fashion Revolution Day. This year, it targeted the discount clothing chain Primark, urging shoppers at home (and in 70 participating countries) to boycott the brand – and to pepper it with questions about where its clothing is made and under what conditions. While the Brits have always celebrated the high-low mix, they seem to know as well as anyone just how low they're prepared to go.