Liverpool
Memories #5
by Jilliana
Ranicar-Breese
After leaving
the Guildford Law Society at the tender age of 18
and the security of my father's old fashioned law
offices in Castle Street, I embarked on a career
in fashion.
I had always been interested in clothes and so to
be a fashion buyer for a department store, one
had to work several months in different
departments for experience. Looking back there
was no verbal sales training. One had to say the
mundane 'Can I help you?' I was a trainee at
Lewis's the big 9 floor department store with a
controversial bronze statue by Jacob Epstein of a
naked man over the main entrance entitled 'Liverpool
Resurgent' commonly known with crude Liverpudlian
humour as 'Nobby Lewis' or 'Dickie Lewis!'
At Christmas time in 1962 I was placed in the
mens' department on the first floor behind the
sock and scarf counter. It was exceptionally
crowded with families buying Christmas presents
and I recall a display of good quality cashmere
scarves prominently displayed on the large
circular counter. Suddenly the whole
display vanished! A professional gang had
come in and distracted me. While my back was
turned, the whole lot must have gone into a
capacious carrier bag! Of course the store was
insured and built losses and theft into their
profit margin. Theft was the norm at Lewis's so I
was later told especially at Christmas!
Soon after they moved me Into the small Ladies
Suits section next to the hat department and the
escalators. I had to stand up on my aching legs
all day long wearing a white blouse, over a white
bra which showed through the thin cotton lawn,
and drained me, tucked into a pencil slim black
skirt with a slit up the back. I was slender in
those early days! I worked with 2 dreary middle
aged ladies selling Windsmore and Alexon suits.
One of them with swollen ankles from too much
standing immobile told me to get out while I
could because it was no job for a young girl with
spirit.
Mary Quant, the revolutionary iconic fashion
designer, had just introduced The Ginger Group in
1963 for mass market sales and I was asked to
model a tan and black outfit for The Liverpool
Echo that was on sale in the nearby dress
department. Afterwards I was presented with the
professional black and white photos that I
cherished for years especially as I loved posing
and fancied myself as a model. In 1963 the film 'Cleopatra'
had just come out and every girl wanted to have
thick Liz Taylor eyebrows and black mascara eyes!
Me included.
I buddied up with the late Gale Booth, the
theatre actress who was already divorced from her
actor husband Anthony Booth. With medium length
straight shiny black hair and a thick fringe, she
worked on the busy ground floor demonstrating
hair and cosmetic products on commission. We
would both gossip moan and groan about the store
and its staff over coffee in the canteen.
I was going steady with John Gorman later of The
Scaffold fame. He was on the dole and so had all
the time in the world to visit me, popping up
behind dummies in the ladies department, making
me laugh at his funny faces trying on hats and
generally larking around. He wore an old overcoat
and looked so weird, that the store detectives
would follow him especially around the food hall!
John would come daily at tea breaks, lunch breaks
and call for me every night at the staff entrance
at the back with a fresh bunch of colourful
freesias.
The months passed, 10 in all, and I had still not
been put on the promised training course
officially, just shunted from department to
department for work experience. I felt I was
getting no where and so handed in my notice. It
was then the personnel department said the were
about to send me on a course. Too late as I had
had enough of standing around all day working
with boring two piece suits. I wanted something
more exciting. There had to be more. More is more!
My father had despaired when I had given up Law.
He had hoped I would stay in Liverpool for ever
and take over his law firm which specialised in
Conveyancing, Probate and Divorce. Now my mother
despaired. I was not university material, not
going to be a nurse, teacher or a librarian. A
housewife? No not for me either. She insisted I
did a secretarial course at the best place in
Liverpool, Miss Foulkes Secretarial College in
Rodney Street. A college for young ladies, having
already been educated at Belvedere GPDST, also a
school for young ladies. A 9 month course of
boring Pittman's shorthand and typing plus
administration. O me miserum! 'It will always
come in useful!' she insisted. Yes, mother was
right. It did, it got me my first 3 jobs in
Manchester, a bottle of Chanel 5 perfume typing
in a hotel bedroom for an Israeli businessman, a
PA job working for the award wining film director
Mira Hamermesh, in San Francisco in exchange for
a basement bed in North Beach and finally Paris
where I worked at the OECD for 10 months but that's
another story!
Written
on 26.12.17 at St Benedict, Hastings.
Read on 'Your voice matters' BHCR on 29.12.17.
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