Store Fashion Overview (1909-2008)

Woolworth stores sold fashions throughout their hundred years in the High Street. But the items sold before the Second World War were very different from the stylish Ladybird clothing of more recent times. Our Fashion and Ladybird Gallery explores how tastes and lifestyles changed over the century, drawing on an archive of photographs, advertisements and reminiscences.

When the first British Woolworths opened in Liverpool in 1909, the world was a very different place. Many more mums made clothes for themselves and their children, rather than buying made-up garments.

The High Street stores sold everything that was needed to get started. The Haberdashery department stocked paper patterns which were kind of 'join the dots' guides to making clothes. It also carried wool, cotton and ribbons, as well as needles and pins of all shapes and sizes, scissors and tape measures.

The highest price for anything was sixpence, the equivalent of 2½p at the time or £2.11 today, but many Haberdashery items was just one old penny.

For beginners, the stores stocked sixpenny starter packs with everything needed to make a simple garment. The baby's bonnet on the right was one of the first items ever sold. The pack had cloth, needles and thread. Customers chose the ribbons separately.

Packs like the bonnet were sold in large quantities between 1909 and 1921, as Woolworth grew from one to a hundred branches.

Making things was one of the things that women of all ages did during long winter evenings, under gas light, in the days before television and radio. Most girls were taught dressmaking and basic mending at school, where it was considered a key life skill, that could also save them money.

Before World War II the stores also offered an ever-changing selection of made-up garments at bargain prices. To supplement regular ranges of stockings and socks, the Buyers sought out manufacturers' surplus and seconds, which they were able to sell cheaply. Silk knickers were a favourite sixpenny line; signs in the stores claimed that they were surplus from 'Regent Street Fashion Houses', rather than the Lancashire factories that made them.

In the Thirties there was a craze for 'Vanity Veilings'. At the time women rarely ventured out without a hat. The veilings provided a cheap way to spruce up old headwear The picture shows a 1935 window of 'Fashion's Latest Vanity Veilings'.

Escalating prices after the outbreak of World War II forced the High Street chain to drop its sixpenny price maximum, opening the door for a wider fashion range. Between 1950 and 1980 the Buyers worked hard to establish a cheap but stylish family clothing offer with mass-market appeal.

Patterns enjoyed a renaissance after World War II. Clothing remained rationed after fighting ended, inspiring a new generation of seamstresses and knitters to make their own outfits using hand-me-down garments and more than a little ingenuity with the needle.

Woolworth made certain that its pattern selection was up-to-date, and consciously targeted younger shoppers with eye catching wall displays of patterns with full-colour lifestyle photos on the front. The pattern covers were like their shop window. Time and money was invested to find photogenic models and to arrange poses that aped both the stars and scenes on the silver screen.

While on a nearby counter Penguin paperback books had trebled in price between 1940 and 1950, the Buyer kept the paper patterns at the pre-war price of threepence (1¼p), hoping they would go on to entice shoppers to buy their wool, cotton and needles from Woolies.

Woolworths' relationship with Ladybird started in the 1930s when the manufacturers, Pasolds, used the chain's open door policy to show samples from their new factory in Langley, Buckinghamshire. They met the Buyer, Herbert Cue, who liked what he saw and paid a little extra for a vast order. The companies enjoyed a cordial relationship for the next sixty years until Woolworths bought the Ladybird brand name outright just before the millennium.

Despite the good relationship, Woolworth insisted on using its own name or garments and also bought clothes from many other British and Irish suppliers. You can see pictures of some of the Fifties and Sixties displays later in our Fashion Gallery.

The stores were remodelled after the chain changed hands in 1982. The new owners dropped adult clothing so that they could concentrate on fashion for children, particularly the very young. Executives amazed the City by announcing that they had licenced the respected Ladybird brand, which would be sold exclusively at Woolworth stores in the UK. The brand owner, Coats Viyella, worked closely with the Buyers to improve design, quality control and supplier selection. The partnership fulfilled a longstanding dream of the visionary behind the Ladybird brand. Eric Pasold had always wanted to his well-made, stylish clothes to be available nationally and to be affordable for ordinary people.

Our Fashion Gallery includes pictures of the first test store for Ladybird at Reading, Berkshire and brings the story up to date with Shop Direct rescuing the Woolworths brand and continuing to offer the latest Ladybird fashions on-line through a revitalised website. It's a tradition that started more than 400 years ago and is still going strong today!

The Ladybird and Fashion Gallery

Fashion overview (1909-2009)   Make it yourself patterns and thread   The Ladybird Legend is born

Woolworths' first Ladybird items (from the 1930s Gallery)    History of the Ladybird Company    Building fashion sales (1950-80)

Launch of Ladybird at Woolies     Kids and Celebrations In-Store     The Easter Parade

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