Simon: My name is Simon Perry, today is the 19th of June 2024 and this is an oral history project called ‘Packs’ People’ and we are in the Crown in Ryde on the Isle of Wight and we’re with …
Christine: Christine Fisher-Lathwell.
Simon: Christine, thanks very much for offering to do this today. Can you tell me your year and place of birth?
Christine: June 21st, 1949, and I was born in Petworth in Sussex.
Simon: Ok, and what your mum and dad’s names?
Christine: They were Aubrey Roy Street and Kathleen Laura Street.
Simon: And do you know which years they were born?
Christine: My father was born in 1922, but my mother was older that him. She was born in 1911.
Simon: Ok. And what did they do?
Christine: My mother was a Chemist’s Assistant and my father was a Radio and Television Engineer.
Simon: And what was life like? How long did you live in Petworth?
Christine: Not very long. We moved to the Isle of Wight maybe a year after I was born.
Simon: So, no memories of Petworth.
Christine: No memories, but I do have holiday memories of Petworth, big ones, but no and the family moved to the Isle of Wight I presume in about 1951.
Simon: And which part did you move to?
Christine: We moved to Cowes in Mill Hill Road in Cowes. I lived there with my brother Frank, and my sister Margaret and dad and mum of course.
2 minutes
Christine: Frank was 12 I think when we moved there but as he grew up he was a brilliant artist and had the opportunity to move and live in America with our aunty and uncle, to go to Art School. He became a Commercial Artist.
Simon: What made them move to the Isle of Wight?
Christine: My dad came from the Isle of Wight …
Simon: Ok.
Christine: … and they bought a house in Cowes, if I remember.
Simon: Right. And so, your brother was 11 years older.
Christine: Yes.
Simon: At what point did he move to America then? That’s quite a big move isn’t it?
Christine: When he was 16.
Simon: Your dad said, “Hey” I guess the equivalent of … this is years later, I guess you learnt he just thought well I want to move back to the Island.
Christine: We moved back a year after I was born, and because dad had seen a house on the Island and he wanted to be near his parents who lived in Ryde, but not too near …
Simon: (laughs) within touching distance but not in the pocket.
Christine: … yeah and at that point I presume my mother agreed although she loved Petworth, and we came over here and stayed in Cowes for about 5 years and then we moved to Ryde.
Simon: So, you went to school in Ryde.
Christine: I did, yes. We lived in High Park Road and my school was Bishop Lovett and my sister was at Sandown Grammar.
4 minutes 3 seconds
Simon: And how was growing up and going to school in Ryde?
Christine: I loved it, absolutely loved it. So close to the Beach. Felt that our house … my friends envied our house because it was a kind of … it looked like a Tudor House, that’s the only way I can explain it, in High Park Road, and they thought we were really posh (laughs) so dad sold our house in Cowes and we moved to Ryde.
Simon: And school was enjoyable as well as the times …
Christine: Yes, Bishop Lovett was great fun.
Simon: And then what … you left school and then went to Packs?
Christine: Yes, I sat my 11+ and I passed a year after my sister, but the school apparently there were only so many places for children to go to Sandown Grammar and mum thought that I’d probably be better off staying at Bishop Lovett, so I stayed at Bishop Lovett but there I discovered that I really enjoyed painting. Not painting exactly but drawing things, so … and there was some inherent thing I think from my brother who was absolutely brilliant and that’s why I stayed at Bishop Lovett until I left. I was offered GCSEs but didn’t want to take them. Free spirit, and mum said, Well, you’re going to have to get a job” (laughs) and she found me a job at Pack and Cullifords which is …
Simon: Right, which is pretty close to where we’re actually sitting right now. I mean we can see the old building.
Christine: We can, we can absolutely.
Simon: So, she came home one day and said, “Hey guess what? You’re going for an interview.”
Christine: Yes, she’d seen an advert in the County Press for a person to work in the Baby Department in Packs with an artistic flair, and mum thought, oh Chris has got an artistic flair, she can go for this job and I did and thankfully I got it. I now realise that possibly the only reason I got it was that the Window Dresser had fled to London, Stephanie, and there wasn’t anyone to dress the windows.
6 mins 33 seconds
Simon: So each Department had their own Window Dresser.
Christine: No, it was more that the one Window Dresser dressed all the windows, but Stephanie wanted more experience, I’m assuming, so there were I think it was 7 or 8 windows to dress … one two three four five … maybe 9 windows to dress and I started dressing the Baby Linen window. Miss Guy came to see me, took me to the window, let me step in and she said, “I want you to take all this down” and then the things were hung on nylon threads and then she handed me a hammer, nylon thread and some pins and I was never without them for many, many years to come (laughs) and I didn’t know what display was. I had no inkling. I thought it was a peacock spreading it’s feathers. It didn’t occur to me what display was and of course it was something I had to learn, but Miss Guy was really, really, really kind. She used to come down, even though I’d heard her quite stern, you know with the people that worked there. You know she wouldn’t have anything go wrong. Things had to be absolutely perfect. She was very kind and she showed me how to hang things from nylon thread.
8 minutes 12 seconds
Simon: I was going to say was Miss Guy, she was the owner was she?
Christine: She was the owner’s daughter. Old Mrs Guy, or ‘the dragon’ …
Simon: That was the daughter or the mother?
Christine: That was the mother.
Simon: Right.
Christine: But she really was a fabulous lady but none of us appreciated that because whenever she came down from her office, it was like the Queen was arriving (laughs). We really had to be on our best behaviour because it was like an Army inspection so she just wanted everything to be perfect for Packs and I think she was quite right now that I think about it (coughs). Miss Guy, who eventually was married and became Mrs Barrow, she was a lot kinder and less frightening. She also wanted the windows to be perfect though, so it took some … at least a year or so for me to understand what was required because each thing that was being displayed was displayed in a totally different way and I guess they maybe saw some kind of understanding in me and Mr Guy suggested that … that was Miss Guy’s brother, suggested that I went to Portsmouth Art College (clears throat) where I took a course in Display and every Thursday evening I would go to Portsmouth and pile up baked bean cans until they didn’t fall over (laughs).
10 minutes 14 seconds
Christine: But I think I may have said that I found the rudiments of display by learning what shape was required to make a window interesting and the shape was basically a triangle and a back to front kind of from the top back moving everything towards the front. And it really is quite a good way of displaying things although these days there aren’t many windows to dress anyway, but … so I got my Display Certificate and went on to do an Art ‘A’ Level and was happily working away when they decided to get a Display Manager because they needed somebody to drive me and him to all the different Branches because the girls in all the Pack’s Branches were having to do the windows themselves (coughs). So, they … a chap called Mr Pitman arrived from Devon, Brian Pitman his name was. He and I … he would drop me off at different Branches, leave me there and then come and pick me up while he would come back and do the Pack’s windows that were in really the most important because they had the most windows and probably the most business.
Simon: Goodness gracious. There’s so much for us to go through. From there, wow! That’s an amazing starting point.
12 minutes 4 seconds
Christine: There is, I know, but that’s where it started. So, is there anything that you want to ask me?
Simon: Goodness, there’s so much I want to ask you (laughs). There’s so much there. Where do we start? I think this idea of you leaving school and then basically saying, ‘There’s the window, get on with it then.’ At what age were you then?
Christine: I was 16.
Simon: I mean it’s just … I guess when you’re 16, you’re kind of fearless.
Christine: Absolutely yes.
Simon: So, ‘Ok, yeah I’ll give it a go.’ Was that your approach?
Christine: Well yes, I remember being terrified of having to climb up a ladder because they were really wobbly, but the only way that you could get the effect that you wanted as I learnt over the months, that I needed to get an effect by going outside and looking at what I was putting in the window and realising it was either top heavy or there was nothing at the back, nothing at the top and putting that into practice about the ‘A’ shape or triangular shape for display was quite hard because when you’d … for instance I learnt that you should start at the very top so whatever you had at the top either had to be standing on something or hung and more towards the back. So, all those things came into play as I began to dress each window, would use different things. For instance, the Millinery Department I’d have to go up and choose coordinating hats to go in the Millinery Department which is French Franks island window.
Simon: Well that’s a 360-degree window isn’t it?
Christine: Yes, so you entered from the back and people would come and go through into Packs that way, usually knocking on the window, so that window had to be dressed from the point of view of them coming out as well as going in.
14 minutes 14 seconds
Simon: Right. That’s a whole … I mean I guess when it’s a normal window you can hide the bits that the public can’t see.
Christine: You can but a lot of things were hidden at the back of the window. So, myself and as Mr Pitman began working there, he encouraged us to start making different things for the window, different props and he bought things like square columns all of different heights that would mean you could display shoes and hats and all sorts of things on these columns in front of the clothing (clears throat). So, there were all things that he brought into Packs when he was there. I would love to get hold of him and say, “Would you like to come and talk again?” He decided to leave Packs and about 2 months later I got a letter from him to my mum asking if I wanted to go up to London and work with him, which I did.
Simon: Right.
Christine: But coming back to Packs was … everything was made in the basement and all the props …
Simon: This was the original time? The first time?
Christine: Yes, back to the original time, so this is my first stint at working with Packs, and …
Simon: When you said made in the basement, they gave you a space inside it. ‘Here’s a workshop’ effectively.
15 minutes 48 seconds
Christine: Yes, they had a cellar, you could walk through so we had an area to stack our props and an area with sort of workbenches where we would jigsaw out hardboard to make certain shapes you know. So, I learnt how to make things as well, to make miniature things like tiny elves for the Grottos and then our next Display Manager, Sue Arthur I believe it was. No, Colin Creasey, sorry. He was a different kind of Window Dresser. A little bit more straightlaced. Not really given to adventure with the windows so I sometimes used to get into trouble because I loved to do really unusual windows and so I would do things like, when there was a massive gale in the churchyard, a tree fell down so I asked Mrs Barrow if I could put the tree in the window, which I did, and we displayed leather and furs with this tree. It was a massive great branch and the window was called ‘Take a walk on the wild side’ and I didn’t always hit it off with Mr Creasey because he was much more conventional in his display but he was a really nice man . He was very. Very nice but I’m not sure what happened when I left, but at that time I still hadn’t left so we had our daily routine where we would go. It would be maybe Mondays would be Shanklin Branch.
Simon: How many Branches at that time were you looking after the windows of then?
Christine: All of the Branches except for Morgan’s in Cowes. I think Mr Guy ran that.
Simon: So, where were the Branches? Do you remember?
Christine: So, there was Totland, Yarmouth, Shanklin, Cowes, Miss Pack.
Simon: That was in Ryde, Union Street.
Christine: Yes, it was just up where the Estate Agent is. There’s a turning to go round to Newport. I don’t remember there was one in Ventnor, Sea View, Miss Pack, Ryde, but at that time Elizabeth Pack was Woods and Wilkins.
18 minutes 34 seconds
Simon The one that has been converted.
Christine: That’s right, yes.
Simon: Ok.
Christine: We used to get our display things from there so I remember Woods and Wilkins. Everyone in sort of caramel brown work coats, or Doctor’s coats (laughs).
Simon: That’s great isn’t it?
Christine: Lovely Woods and Wilkins. It was one of those places that smelt of all sorts of things like wood and leather and you know really many, many things. Very much like the back of Hurst’s in Newport. Very much like that with everything you could wish for.
Simon: Yeah. I mean it is a phenomenon Hurst’s isn’t it, it really is, just the amount of stuff you can get in there. So, when you were talking about the 9 windows that you were looking after, that was including all of the Branches or was that 9 windows in Ryde?
Christine: There were 9 windows in Ryde and oh I forgot to count how many Branches we had.
Simon: There was quite a few wasn’t there?.
Christine: Yeah, now let’s see. Ryde, Totland, Cowes, Sea View …
Simon: Freshwater?
Christine: … Yarmouth.
Simon: Ok.
Christine: I don’t think there was one in Freshwater, but not as far as I know.
Simon: Ok. And each of those had 1 window each.
Christine: No, Shanklin had 4 windows. They had to be done in a day, yes. So, we’ve got 9 Branches I think at the moment.
Simon: Goodness. I mean that is a full-time job.
20 minutes 4 seconds
Christine: Yes, and it was. Department Stores, I mean Shanklin were Department Stores, Sea View was a Department Store, and Morgan’s as far as I know was a Department Store. Didn’t do Yarmouth. I think Mr Pitman did Yarmouth.
Simon: Ok. So, when you … it’s just this idea of you at 16 turning up and them saying, “Well there’s your nylon thread, there’s a hammer, get on with it.”
Christine: Yeah.
Simon: Having never … I mean you’d seen windows but I don’t know if you’d seen it in terms of mentally disassembling what they were doing.
Christine: No, I mean my life was just basically the Isle of Wight. I hadn’t been anywhere else and yes, I used Packs to get my school uniform, but the idea of dressing a window. I didn’t really understand what display was. It’s something because I’d not been in retail business (clears throat).
Simon: You mentioned about going to Packs for your school uniform. Can you describe the process of what it was like going into Packs for your school uniform?
Christine: Well, it was lots of fun. It was lovely and it all smelt really nice because my old things had got really crummy and awful, and so it was really exciting when Maggie and I used to go with mum, because they sold school uniforms.
Simon: So, what was the experience of getting your school uniform like?
Christine: Well, there were school uniforms for most of the schools. I don’t know if it was Ryde, but I’m pretty certain my sister who went to Sandon Grammar, I’m sure she got hers there, and she and I had so much fun trying on … all the things were kept. For instance, PE kits , blouses, skirts and dresses, summer dresses were on rails but all the rest of the things were in pull out drawers where you could see through the glass case to get your things and it was so much fun to show each other our clothes and what they looked like. But the worst thing was when somebody from the Convent came in at the same time as you because for some reason the Convent girls seemed to look down on the girls that went to Bishop Lovett (laughs) and Sandown. I don’t know whether Sandown Grammar was included but I remember feeling slightly embarrassed because I had the green summer dress of Bishop Lovett. However, but the experience was that a very nice lady who I remember called Mrs Brown, would come and measure you round the bust and round the hips and across the back to make sure everything was right, the blazer was right. It just felt really important getting that new school uniform and I remember many years later when trying to get uniform for my children, that I would have loved for them to have the experience of getting the school uniform from Packs, ‘cos I mean they’d done it for years and years. They knew what to do.
24 minutes 6 seconds
Simon: You felt special know that you were going to get …
Christine: Yes, absolutely special, yes.
Simon: Right. And how did the people treat you at sort of …?
Christine: When I was the child or going in when I first went?
Simon: As a child yeah. When you went for uniform.
Christine: The same way as they would treat a female customer who was going to buy. You know we weren’t called ‘madam’ but it was that feeling that we were special because we were being measured and did everything fit right and if the summer dress was too long, there was the offer for it to be taken up or altered because upstairs they had a wonderful Sewing Room which I came to see when I worked as Display. So, it wasn’t kind of the production line. You were treated … I can even remember my last summer dress having darts put in it because I had bust at last (laughs). It’s really weird but it was the fact that it would be shaped to me, which I thought was wonderful. It’s one of the services that I never really thought about until now.
Simon: It’s interesting that idea of … I sure the very wealthy have this, as clothes customised for them, but at that just being for school uniform.
Christine: I was just a normal ordinary person from High Park Road, I wasn’t anybody special but to have my … yes, I mean my mum could sew and she probably would have done that for me but it was so nice to think that somebody actually cared that we had changed or evolved. They even kept records of our measurements, so that if anybody new came in, they would possibly know because there were always different Juniors learning in the Children’s Department and around the side because it was … the ground floor had a middle and you came round to one Department or in a door to go to another Department the other side of the round.
26 minutes 23 seconds
Simon: What do you mean round?
Christine: Well the counters. The counters, they weren’t round but they were displayed in such a way that the Children’s Department came along here with one slightly to the left, and then there was a gap and then you’d go on around this middle portion that had displays on it and more drawers with things in, and then you came to the Hats and Gloves Department. Sorry, not the Hats Department, the Gloves and Accessories Department. So, there were two Departments downstairs and so it made a lot more room for them to keep everything and then of course there were the display cabinets that you could put your hands on, that you could look through to see the things in the drawers. Vests and pants and all sorts of things. I’m pretty certain they did for Ryde School as well, I’ve a feeling.
Simon: Ok. So, did you shop there at any other time?
Christine: Yes, I would go upstairs with my mum and my sister for mum to find a new coat or a new dress and the service was impeccable. Absolutely impeccable. There was Miss Keeling and Mrs Drawbridge in the Coat Department, and then there was June Langdon, Mrs Barrow in the Dresses Department which led through I think to the Bridal Department as far as I remember, so I can’t remember the names of any of the people that worked there but I think they often had Junior girls working there.
28 minutes 7 seconds
Simon: So, your learnt their names afterwards. You wouldn’t know them as a customer as …
Christine: No, we didn’t know them as a customer. We just knew that mum was always greeted with “Good morning madam, how can we help you today?” and they were wonderful ladies. One of the ladies that worked there, Mrs Drawbridge, has a daughter whose written a book called ‘Isle of Wight Memories, our childhood memories’ and it’s down in the Victoria Arcade where there’s a Museum about Ryde, so she has the book down there and she spoke about Mrs Drawbridge, her mother, in it. I bought the book because I desperately wanted to bring it with me when we came to meet to show you Mrs Drawbridge name and Pack and Culliford was mentioned when the Theatre, which was the Nat West Bank burnt down and the Drawbridges came through to see what was happening. It said it was lucky it didn’t touch Pack and Cullifords, so that was just a mention in the book that I thought would be relevant, and then I forgot to bring it (laughs).
Simon: I mean just that whole shopping experience sounds … it felt special. Were all the other shops like that that you went into or … ?
Christine: Yes, everybody was well trained in order to give you that kind of service.
Simon: Every shop in the High Street felt like that or felt different?
Christine: Oh no, I thought you meant Pack and Cullifords. I was going to say Pack and Cullifords probably … well, there were some shops where you were treated in the same manner but it was perhaps becoming a little bit old fashioned and I’m so glad that Packs retained that because it made people feel special. I mean the amount of people that have said, “I got my wedding dress in Packs” you know, is because there were other wedding dress shops but there was this service that Packs gave that made us all feel really, really special.
30 minutes 17 seconds
Christine: The other shops, the Dress Shops funnily enough there was one down Union Street, Marder’s Dress Shop, and in our house in High Park Road, we lived the other end of this big Tudor house and the people that owned Marder’s lived in the other end, and they were lovely people, very, very kind and nice. Their service was good but nowhere near as … you know measuring people, taking everything in, making sure that people had everything that they wanted. You know, it wasn’t quite the same, it was more of an off the peg service. I don’t know if that’s what you call it.
Simon: Yeah, sounds right.
Christine: Yes, so they had factories making their clothes whereas a lot of … I’m not saying, I mean Mrs Barrow, Miss Guy used to go to London to buy from all the Fashion Houses so that’s why there was such a choice of things, You know, she’d buy anything from Mary Quant to Chanel. She had a very varied taste in clothes, and so people knew, the people that respected and loved fashion, knew that they could come to Packs. And it’s probably why they opened ‘Miss Pack’ that I forgot to count, because they knew that in the ‘60s, there was this massive trend towards Mary Quant clothes and that style of thing, you know, Carnaby style.
Simon: And that didn’t fit in within the way that …
Christine: No, because we didn’t have a Teenage Department.
Simon: Packs and Culliford was.
Christine: No that’s right because it was the Departments were, from the top, Sewing Room, Millinery, Coats and Dresses, Evening Wear and Bridal and then coming downstairs it was the Children’s Department and the Haberdashery Department, so …
32 minutes 21 seconds
Simon: That was on the Ground Floor was it?
Christine: Yes, that was on the Ground Floor.
Simon: So, ‘Miss Packs’ or ‘Miss Pack’ felt like well this is totally different to the type of clothes we sell there.
Christine: Absolutely, we were so excited when it opened. We had the most fabulous models that Miss Guy bought from a firm that became very famous with all the London … Adel Rootstein models, and instead of being just stagnant, they were posed and we had a famous … I can’t think of her name now, a big fuzzy haired model from the ‘60s and she was posed like this, and we had to put her together and they just posed in different ways. We had Twiggy, they were …
Simon: They actually had mannequins of famous …
Christine: … mannequins of different people, yes. Twiggy was very, very popular ‘cos she was tiny and then, I can’t think of this … she was a very, very famous … something like Veruschka, a famous black model with big hair and it was the fact that you could pose these Adel Rootstein models in lots of different poses.
Simon: ‘Cos of the way their arms were jointed or …
Christine: Yes, and they just were standing in totally different poses and they could put their arms up in the air because that’s the way they had developed their arms had been so that you could make them look as if they were throwing their arms up in the air. So, that was fabulous, ‘Miss Packs’ was the ultimate teenage place to go on a Saturday. Mrs Barrow had that … Miss Guy had that kind of foresight.
34 minutes 8 seconds
Simon: So, that was while you were working there, ‘Miss Pack’ opened, or was that …?
Christine: I’m trying to remember because I came back from London a bit later.
Simon: Oh right this may have been a subsequent one.
Christine: I think it was, yes.
Simon: Ok, well we can maybe come on to that.
Christine: But it must have been … yes we do need to find out when it was.
Simon: I’m sure someone’s got a timeline of it in the project.
Christine: Yes, I can’t remember how long I was there at Packs before I went to London. I’ve got letters from me to my mum talking about … as I went to work for Mr Pitman in London, and talking about that, but I think that was 1964. So, what I’m trying to establish is when Mrs Barrow … no I left school in 1964, so maybe it was ‘66, ’68. Anyway, I think I really need to find that out because Mr Guy would probably or Tim would probably know, Tim Guy would know if you get to speak to him.
Simon: I think that this idea of you for so many years going in and having a school uniform, having that wonderful experience, and then thinking, well then joining there to work, what was that feeling like?
35 minutes 35 seconds
Christine: Well. It was strange because (coughs) I sort of knew the bottom floor and the top floor, but I didn’t know there was anything else. It was exciting and I learnt to run up the stairs and run down. I was really fit because there was several areas of stairs. We had the Display Room upstairs and the Display Room downstairs and the Display Room was on top of the Sewing Room, so the experience of going in there and actually being allowed to open a drawer, go behind the counter, or even pick things out, and Mrs Brown would say, “What do you want for the window?” and I would think, ‘I don’t know, what do I do? Do I put boys things in, baby things in, so I said to her that I would like to dress a babywear window, simply because I loved all the little dresses that they’d got on little hangers, and so she said to me, and that would be my first window, which (laughs) was quite a calamity. I was trying to get nylon thread hooked onto the ceiling and then bring it down and the little dresses were on coat hangers so I would hang one and then I’d have to hang more nylon thread to do two either side and then I would hang nylon threads from other nylon threads and sometimes that would collapse (laughs). It was a nightmare and the ladders used to wobble and I was just petrified the first time it started to sway towards the window and it swayed back and I was able to hold the wall. And Mrs Brown came down and said, “Are you alright?” but those were the feelings that stay with me. It’s not … the experience was somewhat frightening but it just gave me some … I would go to bed at night and dream when I knew and start thinking about how I would display the next window. How would they want it? And then Miss Guy would come into the windows, especially her dress window, and she would tell me how she would like the models placed and then she explained to me it’s a good idea to arrange accessories down by the model’s feet. So, she really, really helped me when it came to display and after about a year, I felt confident enough to go up and if she wasn’t in, I would choose clothes to go in the window and then she would either come in and say, “No, I don’t want that” so everything would [telephone rings] everything would go pear shaped and I’d have to undress all the models again.
38 minutes 36 seconds
Christine: These were the recall of the experiences. I remember getting quite bold and going into the Haberdashery, the window was the French Frank’s window that was a round … and getting more accessories to use in the window, and there was a lady called Mary there who was very nice but very sharp, and she’d say, “What are you doing in my drawers? Get out of my drawers” which is just a passing joke really, but you know I was a bit afraid of her to begin with. In the end I would just go and get what I wanted because I would have to explain to her that the Millinery window needed handbags and accessories, and they couldn’t just be in the front. They had to go round, so when people, I think about after a year people were much more comfortable with me choosing the things to go in the window. They would tell me what they wanted as a basis, and then I would go and pick out. And sometimes the things they chose clashed in either style or colour. They might have been too close a colour but not quite a match, so I would then find something that I thought either contrasted or … you know and so my colour interpretation got better and better, which is something I also learnt at the Portsmouth Art School, and I didn’t realise that I had that in me.
40 minutes 15 seconds
Christine: It’s just that when mum, many years later when she looked at the cards my sister and I used to make, thankfully my sister was in America at the time, she said, “Chris, I knew you had talent because your cards were so much better than Margaret’s.” Margaret’s were very good, very neat and tidy, but mine she said had more imagination (laughs). I hope Maggie never listens to this (laughs) if she comes over. She sort of knew that I had that colour ability but probably didn’t know how it would be best used. I think she was dreading the thought that if I went to Grammar School, I probably wouldn’t have been up to the work there and that I would maybe try to go to University anyway, and she knew that that probably wouldn’t be me ‘cos I was very much a free spirit I think. So, that’s probably why I went to London. I don’t know, but I think that the Guys were pleased with me because as I said they did take me back again when I came home from London and felt somehow my experience up there would probably benefit them I would imagine. So, Mr Guy was great. He took me back 3 times so that was very kind of him to do that.
41 minutes 53 seconds
Simon: When they said to you … it sounded like the first window there, well what do you want to do with it, but then they sort of moved on to saying, “Well there’s a particular …” I guess if they had a new piece of clothing or something that the Manager for that area would say, “Ok, we want to focus on this, this time.”
Christine: Yes, ‘cos if they had a new line in of something that had to be displayed, and sometimes they would get art work or posters and various things that belonged to the new line of things, so those would have to be displayed. Yes, so if it was a new particular maker who wanted everything displayed, I’m trying to think of the name of it. Used to sell wool. It was children’s clothes. Viyella baby wear was made of wool and cotton and so Viyella would often send through advertising material. Lots of it was great fun the advertising material. You know to have to make it up ‘cos it was made of cardboard put together. But sometimes I knew or when I came back, I knew that they wanted a particular line but they didn’t have any advertising for it so I’d make something. Of course, it wasn’t in the days of the … days when you could print something from the internet, but we had an Artist upstairs called Dion [or Diane-maybe] and she hand did all the notices for Packs for the tickets and everything.
Simon: Wow!
Christine: Yes, an amazing job she made, so I would get her to make me a big Viyella print out and then do maybe a picture of children or little girls in dresses or whatever was appropriate from the Viyella advertising, so she would do that.
Simon: And that would sit at the back of the display would it?
Christine: Yes, or wherever it looked most prominent. Sometimes if it was small it would go into the front of the window. Sometimes it would be a big backboard you know, and the clothes would kind of sit to the side of it slightly.
44 minutes 4 seconds
Simon: I mean that’s amazing for you to be able to have your own Art Department effectively.
Christine: Yes, basically Dion [or Diane-maybe] was our Art Department. She was a wonderful artist, so yes because if anything had to be made for the windows, I think that the previous Display Manager, Stephanie, probably made a lot of it, but Dion [or Diane-maybe] would always do the writing to go on it, the print.
Simon: And did you make bits and pieces for the window, or dye …?
Christine: Yes.
Simon: Well, let’s start this from … lets jump to when you’re maybe a year in, we may come back to the earlier stuff again later, but you’re a year in, so you’ve been to College, you understand, you’ve got the flow, you understand the ‘A’ the triangle, the depths. Somebody says to you, “Ok, here’s the clothes,” what is the process that you went through? Did it just instantly you just had a vision for it? How did it come together?
Christine: Well, before I went home at night, I would know which window I was doing in the morning, so often just before I went home I would go up and ask them what sort of colours they were putting in, had they chosen the things? Sometimes they hadn’t but if they had told me or showed me the garments, then I would start thinking up what relates to that? What is this? Is this rainwear? Do I … for instance I remember making shards of nylon thread. It was at the back of the display, coming down and then marking each one in black, space, black, space and that gave the impression of rain, so Alligator Rainwear would be on display. So, to make something, if I knew in advance I might have to go down to Rolfe’s Art Gallery down Union Street and buy things. I would buy sometimes different coloured cardboard they sold, and I would either cut letters out or cut shapes out that I wanted. If it was raindrops, it would be raindrop shape, and then as the year progressed, I got a little bit more adventurous and I bought myself a jigsaw. My dad suggested this because I could see that you could make things out of hardboard, so my dad …
46 minutes 52 seconds
Simon: Less wobbly than cardboard.
Christine: Yes, so I learnt to make things out of hardboard. So, I would draw them out downstairs, cut them out and then paint them or do whatever I had to do. Put wooden struts at the back to make sure they stayed right, so at that point I … that’s when I began making props. I in fact used that same idea many years later when I was working in Hill’s. But if the theme was Christmas, I remember sitting making endless elves and fairies out of bits of felt and fluorescent wings, you know just having them hanging down. I sort of began to realise that you couldn’t have the props in the front. They had to be at the back because the garments were most important, and I would then, in my mind … then I’d go home, lay there and think what can I do to do this, you know. How can I display it?
Simon: So, that’s with you having a vison of what you wanted it to be.
Christine: Yes, and how can I achieve it? And then I’d think about the things that we had downstairs because we often had a stock of different things. We had a Material Department and a Jumpers Department I think and I used to have things from the Material Department down there. Ribbons and all sorts of things, so yes, that’s how I did it, gradually over … I’m sure I was there probably for nearly 2 years, and it was gradual. It was a learning process. Sometimes things would be disastrous, you know. They just didn’t look right in the window or I’d used the wrong colour paint because I wasn’t allowed to take any clothes downstairs in case I got paint on them. So, the trouble is once you’d bought the paint from Woods and Wilkins, you couldn’t take it back (laughs). All sorts of things you learn as you go along.
Simon: I mean we learn a lot from our mistakes as well don’t we?
Christine: Absolutely.
Simon: So, when you looked at … you’d finish a window, you mentioned before going sort of in and out, looking at what’s it like from the outside and …
Christine: Yes absolutely. I’d look at the empty window first and look at where the models who usually had a cover on them because we couldn’t show them nude, and I’d look at how they were placed and I’d think about the stock I’d been shown and then I would decide where the models needed to stand. Were there 2 here and maybe 1 there, maybe 3 here, just to balance the window. The window always needed to be balanced. You couldn’t have it too heavy on one side, so if it was heavy on one side, and there was nothing you could do about it, you had to find something to go on the back wall or something heavy in the front to go around the model to balance it. So, there would be 1, 2 and 3 and that in equal terms wouldn’t be equal, so whatever you did. And there had to be something at the back of the one model that took the display up a bit, like just a piece of coloured card that reflected the clothes the model was wearing. So, that would make her side of the window balanced in weight. They’ve got lots of stock around there, her, the card at the back and then you’d have 2 models there, that didn’t have any stock. So, it was just … you learn what a natural balance is because you have to keep going back out and going back in again to make it work.
50 minutes 50 seconds
Simon: And sometimes did you, even though that process of back and forth and balancing, you’d finish it and just think either ok, I’ve got that right, and then you look it the next day and go, oh hang on a sec, that wasn’t what I wanted it to be or …
Christine: I could usually tell when I’d finished the window that it definitely wasn’t right, and I needed to do something so I would then go back and I often used to stay over time when I was working part-time eventually, just to make sure I got the window finished, but when I was first there, I wasn’t may be able to do that quite so much. When I very first did the windows, Miss Guy would come downstairs and look in the window and she’d say, “It’s a bit heavy on that side, can you do something about it?” so she kind of taught me to understand the balance, so if I went home and went past the window, at half past five and the shop was closed, and I then looked at it as I was either walking down or up, I would sometimes see and I’d think, you can see the pins at the back of the dress, oh God! Because I’d walked up Union Street and looked in, or this just doesn’t look up right, the model’s too far in the front, so then I’d go home and have a sleepless night ‘till I could, get back in and alter it. So yes, you’re right, but there were numerous times of going back out and back in and changing things around.
52 minutes 34 seconds
Simon: And you were saying when you were at Portsmouth, that you were sort of saying about learning how to stack baked bean cans, how comprehensive was the Course? It was what sort of length?
Christine: A year.
Simon: Ok. And they taught you … did they touch on the colour side of colour balancing or …?
Christine: Yes, we had to do one lesson I think we had of mixing paint, but we didn’t actually have to paint anything, just for us to see what happens when colours were mixed. I mean I kind of knew that if you put certain colours together like blue and yellow you got green, but it was very interesting to be able … you had to do a colour chart that took you from dark all the way through to bringing it up to a lighter colour so that was very, very helpful. I think they then progressed to giving us little bits of stock to put in a window and would then tell us whether or not the window was balanced, so we got that information from them in a way.
Simon: Did you have full size windows in the …?
Christine: No, they were little booths about the size of this window and they were up …
Simon: Ok, yeah, sort of 3 or 4 feet by 6 feet.
Christine: … yeah they were to your bust really, to that level, no they were a bit further down and you had to make sure everything was put in the window and not too far forward or too far back so then the Tutor would come round and decide if your window was working. If not, you had to take it all out and start again. So, it was such good … I hadn’t realised just how much Miss Guy had taught me.
54 minutes 26 seconds
Simon: Right.
Christine: And I don’t think she ever realised either.
Simon: I guess these things … people absorb these things and it just becomes natural for them doesn’t it.
Christine: She knew what she was talking about. I mean she’d been in the business I presume with her mother Mrs Guy, and maybe Mr Guy. They would have been retailers for many years so probably I would think Elizabeth was in their shop with them. I think there was another person in the retail company, Pack and Cullifords, and somebody else. Was it Jack’s? Jack’s, Pack and Culliford?
Simon: Possibly.
Christine: So, I guess that’s how she learnt. And what was nice was that she eventually took me up to London with her to buy props for the window for Autumn props so that we didn’t have to make them, and she was so lovely and friendly, so different to her mannerisms when she was in shop. She wasn’t cold, she was very, very polite and always very polite to us, the staff as well (coughs). Unless you were in her off ice being told off (laughs).
Simon: That is interesting that she sort of had a persona at work.
Christine: Yes, she definitely did.
Simon: And then when you were with her she felt relaxed enough to switch that off.
Christine: Yeah, I know. Yes, she talked much more about the family, and Gillian her sister and she didn’t really tell me much about them, just basically she would tell me something funny that had happened when they’d had a bar-b-que. It was just she was much more natural. She didn’t have to put on this persona I presume.
56 minutes 17 seconds
Simon: Yeah, interesting. And how many times did you go up to London with her then? That was once you’d …
Christine: Twice.
Simon: Right, and that shows quite a lot of confidence in you, that she felt that you were able to have an input on that.
Christine: Yes, and at the time we probably she would have taken the Display Managers that came in. It just happened that the two times that I went we didn’t then have a Display Manager. I don’t think Sue Arthur was there then so we still hadn’t been able to get hold of her actually. Yes, so yes I did feel that she was much more joking and laughing you know.
Simon: And when you went back to work, was she then back in her persona?
Christine: Absolutely, yeah. You wouldn’t be cheeky and say, “Hi Liz” (laughs). That wouldn’t work, no. She had her persona, just as her mother did. Her mother, just amazing woman. And you knew when her mother was coming downstairs because she would kind of bang as she came downstairs you know, it was a funny little walk. Oh dear, I do hope she doesn’t hear me say this. It’s just that his grandmother would have been more like a matriarch, like in ‘Downton Abbey’ that’s who she reminded me of, the matriarch like in ‘Downton Abbey’ but I really, really brilliant Buyer and Elizabeth inherited her ability to understand what the latest fashions were and bring them to the Island.
Simon: And see how they’d translate. I guess not everything was going to translate here.
Christine: Yeah, ‘cos I don’t know … I hadn’t really understood, I knew Fowler’s was a Material Shop next door, but I didn’t really understand. It seemed to me that it took them quite a few years to even have a Teenage Department. That’s where I think ‘Miss Pack’ must have been put up while I was here because I know Fowler’s didn’t have a Teenage Department.
58 minutes 36 seconds
Simon: You were mentioning Woods and Wilkins which is the building that’s been converted now at Cross Street. Can you describe the experience of walking in there? What was that like? You were mentioning about people having the sort of brown work coats on.
Christine: If I remember rightly, there was one very long counter with lots of drawers at the back. It may have changed but the floorboards squeaked when you went in so I think it was floorboards. And then there was an upstairs Department. I think downstairs sold … I think the Do-It-Yourself Department was upstairs, so Wood and Wilkins had all kinds of things. I remember going up the stairs which creaked to the next floor. I don’t think the top floor was anywhere you could go, and that’s where I got my nylon thread in the middle floor and hammers and things like that. I’m trying to think what they sold downstairs and I’ve got the feeling it may have been things like there were lots of little drawers with nails and things in, so I’m not sure. My recalls not … there was definitely an area out the back. I think you could buy wood and planks and sorts of things that Carpenters would use ‘cos I’m pretty certain we bought hardboard to make things out of out there so I’m pretty certain we did because it would wobble as the wind took you across the crossing from Woods and Wilkins to here and the wind would take it and … like Rolf Harris you know with the wobble board. Yes, so I’m pretty certain they sold all sorts of things for Carpenters. I just remember the guys there seemed to be very old.
60 minutes 39 seconds
Simon: You mentioned earlier the sort of smell in the air of Woods and Wilkins.
Christine: Yes, it was like wood and leather. I don’t know what they sold that was leather but it was polish, leather, wood and I suppose there would have been a slight smell of metal.
Simon: So, they sold tools as well in there?
Christine: Yes, absolutely. I just seem to remember having to go upstairs to get my nylon thread and hammers and our Haberdashery Department sold pins, so I didn’t need to get them from Woods and Wilkins but I think we may have got spray paints and silvers and gold for Christmas in there, yes so they probably would have sold, even sold, don’t know if they were invented then, car paints, I would imagine. They definitely seemed to move with the times even though when you walked in it was the era of a sort of Victorian shop, and the chaps there were quite elderly, or at least they seemed like that to a 16-year-old, but they were there for a long time because they definitely were there when I came back.
62 minutes 5 seconds
Christine: It was lots of fun just looking around Woods and Wilkins. It seemed to me a very, very big Store at the time because you know we were used to Department Stores on the Island and Woods and Wilkins was like a Department Store really. Just the fact that you went upstairs and even Elizabeth Packs was a Department Store because you went up the grand stairs to the ‘Coffee Bean.’ Yeah, Woods and Wilkins had a special memory when I was a child of going in there with my dad, who was a TV Repair Man, and you wouldn’t be allowed to do this now, but while we were in there, Maggie and I got sort of itchy feet and started walking around and dad said to us, “No don’t walk around, you might get caught on something or something might fall on you” so there was a very elderly man who worked in Woods and Wilkins. I think he must have gone out. He went and bought us some dolly mixtures and sat us down on some chairs, and we sat and ate the dolly mixtures.
Simon: Oh that’s fantastic.
Christine: It was such a lovely, lovely memory that it’s never left me, but I don’t remember taking in much about Woods and Wilkins there. I just remember dad went there because he was trying to get planks for our garage. The car had gone in and gone through the floor, so dad went in for that. I’m assuming that they were like Morey’s in Newport, that they probably did sell lengths of wood but I don’t know where they would have kept them unless it was out the back …
Simon: Yeah, that makes sense.
Christine: … where Terry Willey’s office [Terence Willey & Co] is.
Simon: You were saying that … let’s touch on a bit of when you … you said maybe a couple of years, two or three years that you were at Pack and Cullifords, and then you went to London. What was the process … you mentioned one of the Display Managers.
64 minutes 26 seconds
Christine: Yes, Mr Pitman. He had gone to a big Store in London called John Sanders in Ealing, and they were looking for a Display girl and he and I got on really well. He was very nice. I got on with him and his wife and he kind of treated me in a fatherly way which was nice and so I … he wrote a letter to my mum and said, “Would you like to Christine to come up to London? She would get some good experience here” and he said, “I really enjoyed working with her and I think she would make a good Display girl” so mum agreed for me to go up there, and the owner of the Store of Sanders, he found me a bedsit and so I went up there and stayed at John Sanders for a while, but Mr Pitman … I think I stayed there for a year. Mr Pitman left, because he got an even better job, I can’t remember where it was, it might have been Debenhams I think down in Cornwall, and that was closer to his home ‘cos he came from Devon. So, he and his wife Stella moved and I thought I don’t really want to stay here now Mr Pitman’s not here and so I applied for a job in … I’m trying to think …5th Avenue in Regents Street and I went to work in 5th Avenue with a really … I didn’t know what ‘gay’ was but there was a very talented gay Display Manager there, a perfectionist, absolute perfectionist.
66 minutes 14 seconds
Christine: I could go out to Carnaby Street at the back of 5th Avenue and have my lunch. I enjoyed working there but I was a little bit afraid of the Manager as everything had to be absolutely perfect, but he seemed to have enough faith in me to get me to conduct a certain window that he wanted done, and that was fun doing that. But anyway, he sent me to one of their Branches in Kensington, 5th Avenue, where I had the experience of him buying 16 Twiggy models all in the same pose, and putting them in an island window, and I had to dress them, to make them look different, even though they were all exactly the same, with Twiggy’s eyelashes and they all had the same pose, like that. I had to do something with them and make them look different, so I got most of them raising their hands, raising their arms, giving each other a cuddle. And then, it was a bit far away from where I was working … sorry I applied for a job in Selfridges, but I didn’t stay there very long because you had to be in work really early. I couldn’t get in from Harpenden in Herts on time, so I was always in trouble for being late, but I didn’t get the chance to dress windows. I was working with the Display Department up top making various props, so I thought I’m not really getting much window dressing experience. I asked if I could do Department displays but they said, “No” because the ladies in the Department did their own, and so I then found a job in Jeunesse Elliotts in Bond Street, a big shoe shop that all the stars went to. The lady that gave me a room in her house in Harpenden, she worked in there, so she put in a good word for me, so I went to dress their windows. So, that was me sort of doing a whole round. I was down Bond Street by the end of it. And the summer came. I’d been up there a year and a half, the summer came and I just longed to come back to the Island again, and for the summer I did beach photography and then I heard that Packs were looking for a Window Dresser (laughs) so I went and saw Mr Guy and he gave me the job again.
68 minutes 39 seconds
Simon: Ok. I mean the Bond Street … Regents Street and Bond Street were probably, and Carnaby Street round the back were the sort of premium areas weren’t they?
Christine: Absolutely. I lived in the ‘60s in London in the best time, because it was all for young people. You know, Kings Road, I dressed their 5th Avenue windows as well, so I got the ‘60s experience from there, but it also gave me an imagination as well. You know, I didn’t have that much when I was on the Island, so coming back to Packs again was a real …I definitely felt much more secure in what I was doing. You know I was allowed to buy things and if I needed props I could look in a catalogue. There was … and then we didn’t have the trip to London eventually, but we would order them and they come down to the Island so Miss Guy would say to me, “What do you think our Autumn theme ought to be?” so we would then look through what was in the catalogues which they then started to produce. At one time you could only go up to visit. I think it was called Schwartz, I’m not sure. So, that was me back on the Island again. A different experience really altogether. People knew me in Packs. Some people had left.
Simon: I wonder if we … are you ok with us doing another session another day?
Christine: Oh yes, that’s fine.
Simon: ‘Cos I’m sort of conscious that they’ve obviously got to ready to open up here and that sort of stuff.
Christine: Are you alright with that?
Simon: Yeah, completely.
Christine: I mean I’m probably talking so much that it’s taking …
Simon: It’s amazingly good, it really is.
Christine: Well, as long as it’s been something that you can use from it.
Simon: It’s been so interesting. I mean I wouldn’t be suggesting coming back if it wasn’t. So, that idea of you having that time in London, taking a break. Let’s stop it there and then we’ll do another one in a couple of days or next week or whatever it is and carry on. There’s so much more to explore as well.
Christine: Ok.
Interview ends.
70 minutes 52 seconds
