The Transformation of Shopping
Department Stores, Social Change and Consumerism, 1830-1994
Spanning more than 160 years of retail history, this resource uses company archives, trade journals and union records to explore a variety of fundamental social and business study themes. Stores and shopping habits in industrialised society rapidly adapted to the transformation of consumer needs, social expectations, and technological advancements.
Featuring archival material from across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Europe, the resource offers an array of comparative sources for studying how the retail landscape changed over time and location. This varied and richly visual collection will support students and researchers across a multitude of disciplines, including business, gender studies, social history, fashion, the history of art, marketing and consumer culture.
Highlights
- Advertisement scrapbooks from the Fashion Institute of Technology and History of Advertising Trust illustrating changes to ready-to-wear fashion over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
- Union correspondence and newsletters covering shop worker campaigns for improved wages, accommodation, and working hours in the US, UK, and Australia
- Trade journals documenting the introduction of new technologies to the retail industry, such as computers, credit cards, escalators and air conditioning
- Posters produced for Estonian store Tallinna Kaubamaja, dating from the Soviet era
- Visual ephemera of Parisian stores from the height of La Belle Époque
- Photographs of fashion shows, product promotions, sales, and community events hosted at the stores
- Press packs for the opening of new store branches, including discount shops, and shopping malls
- Staff newsletters with news and gossip from regional branches of the Hudson’s Bay Company, House of Fraser, Wanamaker’s, and more
Included in
Key data
Source archives
- Archives of Manitoba
- Australian National University, Noel Butlin Archives Centre
- Bibliothèque nationale de France
- British Library
- Fashion Institute Technology-SUNY Library Special Collections and College Archives
- Hagley Museum and Library
- Historical Society of Pennsylvania
- History of Advertising Trust
- National Library of Estonia
- Selfridges Brand Archive
- State Library of New South Wales
- University of Glasgow
- University of Illinois Chicago
- Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library
- Business practice
- Class, labour and unionisation
- Design and architecture
- Everyday life
- Fashion and beauty
- Gender
- Life on the shop floor
- Mass consumerism
- Publicity and marketing
- Race and ethnicity
- Service culture
- Suburbanisation
- Advertisements
- Annual reports
- Business ledgers
- Consumer surveys
- Correspondence
- Guard books and press clippings
- Meeting minutes
- Oral histories
- Photographs
- Radio and TV commercials
- Staff newsletters
- Store guides, plans, and ephemera
- Trade catalogues and cards
- Trade journals
- Training manuals
- Lawrence Black, University of York
- Sarah Elvins, University of Manitoba
- Vicki Howard, University of Essex
- Emily Marshall Orr, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
- Traci Parker, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Margot Riley, State Library of New South Wales
- Business and Economics
- Gender
- Marketing, Advertising and Design
- Sociology, Social History and Social Science
