To miss the excitement of 90's shops

[JunoLunar]

Warning: pointless nostalgia
I love shopping but it's such a dull experience these days.
Maybe it was because I was younger and had such little disposable income. I miss shops selling you a 'lifestyle' as i really only get that feeling in IKEA now.
In particular I miss:
Body shop: the little shaped sponges of oranges, lemons, strawberries and the coordinating sprays, bubble baths and those little iridescent balls that went in the bath.
Disney shop: DD was obsessed with Encanto at Christmas and I had to trawl through what they had on so many different online shops. It would be amazing to have a Disney shop to see all the different merchandise and let her choose a few things. I remember the excitement of the lion king coming out and seeing the big displays with all the cuddly toys. I chose a pencil case with different compartments which hid rubbers, pens etc, think it had a calculator too (high tech!)
The Pier: totally up my hippie mums street. Used to have one of those CD players where you could listen to a snippet of rain music, whale music, wolves howling! Did anyone buy those cds? Also selling us the dream of a coloured glass bowl of water with floating tea lights which definitely didn't end up either getting spilt or left to go mouldy on the book shelf. I remember how grown up I felt buying a wooden cat which came in a stars and moon print paper bag.
Waterstones: I still love it now but loved it even more when there was no Amazon or kindles and you had to proper commit to a book to pay £8 for the hard cover.
HMV: I bought the single of 'Smooth' by Santana on tape and the long haired guy behind the till said 'nice choice'. I was sure I could write for Kerrang magazine based on that comment alone.
Also Debenhams in Bristol had in interactive forest with talking trees and a fake drive in cinema with little cars you could sit in and watch Disney films. It was basically ok for your parents to dump you there whilst they shopped. I vaguely remember going there but we never bought anything as it was ' too dear'.

I used to love the Pier and the Body Shop.
Shopping was fun back in the day. Now every high street is exactly the same.

I've mentioned before but Timothy Whites ( basically Lakeland) but it may have gone by the 90s , can't remember.
Loved Habitat /The Pier/Reject Shop.
So many wonderful things.

I think one of the main problems re High Streets was the saturation of the big High Street names...Dollis, Freeman, Hardy and Willis, Etam , Benetton etc...

Up until the 80s or so, you shopped in your local town for your necessities. You'd therefore have a butcher , fishmonger, greengrocer, wool/babies clothes shop, post office and various other mainly independent traders.

If you needed clothes, shoes, furniture, home furnishings then you went to the nearest 'big town.'

Trouble was, these big town companies spread themselves and started to appear in smaller towns so there was an element of saturation.
I recall a newspaper headline many many years ago about 'identikit High Streets' and the problem with them.

And so here we are ... but no one foresaw the pandemic or online shopping .
That ant these anonymous landlords who just don't want to give up their lucrative business rents.

We need a massive rethink.

There's nothing more wonderful than physically fondling a lovely household, decorative item in your hands, or feeling the fabric on a jacket or rummaging through some posters ( I hear you Athena!)

I think that High Streets are going to be soulless , Primark ridden, Poundland laden, charity heavy and bookmaker riddled no man's lands.
Don't get get me started on all those effing jewellers !!!

This sounds ridiculous but I miss the long queues at the NEXT sale. People used to queue for hours to grab bag fulls of bargains. The last shop I went in was practically deserted apart from all the sales assistants standing around

I remember a rocket ball pit in a furniture shop, just confirmed with my siblings as thought I’d dreamt it! You’d never get that nowadays!!

@RoseGoldEagle

Yea to Athena!

Does anyone remember Evolution?

I loved Evolution!

I loved going in miss selfridge and they had a photo machine. Me and friends would have group photos and choose which frame to have. The photos were the same size as a stamp!

Going to Tammy girl and buying knickers that had a slogan like ‘babe’ ‘angel eyes’

@GrannyWeatherwaxsHatpin

I haven't been back to see the Wilko, such memories and the smell of incense!

MFI was good too and somewhere to take the dc when dh was working

The pier! You reminded me! I had coloured glass
Bowls with water and floating candles and they got all dusty and i never lit the candles

Athena and 3D posters

I would love to be back at my parents house in 1993, it's Saturday morning and I'd get the bus into town. I went every week but it was just so soothing and enjoyable to wander around. And there were no distractions - you weren't clutching a £4 cup of coffee, no phone, no mask wearing, no loyalty cards.

The variety of shops was huge - chains, independents and most towns had a market, too. I loved buying clothes from a market stall, I also remember the excitement of a shoe shop, sitting down, waiting for them to bring the shoes, trying them on, walking up and down and looking at them in that little mirror on the floor, always saying no when they tried to flog you shoe polish.

It's all so dull now. Physical shops just don't put the effort in as the money is all online.

Tammy girl! So many memories!

Hmv booths!

Hippie shop looking at crystals!

Woolworths Pic a Mix

Buying glitter roll ons and bath pearls in Bath & Body works. And the Sephora when I was older!

Going to the BIG Topshop in Oxford St! Awesome memories!

Toy shops that actually had toys you could play with.

Another one who used to just pursue Whittards to smell stuff and have a free sample of tea!

Loving this tread!

I do miss a few shops. British Home Stores. Bit boring but ok. Debenhams. Borders bookshops. Laura Ashley.

😔 I lived in a small town in the 90's. The biggest shop was Woolworths. No clothes shops at all. And so I'd take the train to Lincoln or Nottingham and it was exciting 😃 loved C&A, BHS, Body Shop, HMV, even WHSmith. I now live in Derby city with major shops but really there's nothing much there... So many shops have shut for one reason or another... Its very sad. The former BHS and former Debenhams sites are still empty shops. Dorothy Perkins, Top Shop, Monsoon all gone. Even flaming Argos city store closed.

My fav things from 90s - Pick n Mix from Woolworths …. Flicking through LPs at Our Price …. Going to Blockbusters with friends to choose a VHS film for Movie Night!

Yes yes The Pier, Past Times, Au Naturale....I'd forgotten all about Cargo. I loved Muji as well.

Faith - for the highest black platform shoes you could walk in!

Online shopping killed high streets not a lack of shoppers.

Hugh streets died a long time before online shopping. Largely due to large out of town shopping centres.

• high streets.

I can confirm Hugh Streets is alive and well. Probably,

BoredZelda
We’ll have to agree to disagree.
As far as I remember out of town shopping retail parks appeared around the same time as (or even after) online shopping started to take off.

As far as I remember out of town shopping retail parks appeared around the same time as (or even after) online shopping started to take off.

Nope. These started popping up long before the internet was used for shopping. Brent Cross was the first in 1976, Metro centre opened in 1986, Meadowhall in 1990. And alongside these places you had hypermarkets popping up, with Asda, Tesco etc branching out from food retailing to everything under one roof. Thatcher removed a lot of the regulations that stopped these being built and it has grown from there.

I studied this at university, also before the internet was really a thing, let alone used for shopping. It was called the polo mint effect and had started really in the late 70s.

You may agree to disagree if you like, but you would not be basing that on the facts.

Online shopping may well be what finally kills it off, but the rot of decline has long since set in.

@Inmyownlittlecorner

I grew up in Cheltenham & there was a pick & mix sweet shop in the local shopping arcade (not mall!). It had mirrored walls & bright lights & was full of puck & mix from ceiling to floor. It smelt amazing & no sweet has ever tasted as good as the ones I chose & put in the bright pink paper bag!

@Inmyownlittlecorner

Was that Confetti in Regent Arcade? I used to work there on a Saturday when i was about 16! They sold ice creams too. We used to be allowed a bag of pick n mix after work. Loved a chocolate Brazil and some mint choc chip!

Really enjoyed this thread but would like to take it back a decade or two!
I had some lovely clothes from Peter Robinson, Richard shops, Van Allan etc, then there were the really hippy ones like Lift Up Your Skirts & Fly, Pippy's (in my city anyway)
I worked for Chelsea Girl & had a ball. LOVED it. It's still family owned. It changed to River Island because all of us teens were growing up, and the birth rate had fallen, so the clothes had to appeal to a higher age range.
I also loved wandering round department stores as I got older. Just one independent one left in my city now. Depressing.

@WhyPaulMemory

Ah, fond memories! I used to love The Pier, Athena, Miss Selfridge, maybe a browse in French Connection if they had a sale. I had a Saturday job in the 90s in Body Shop so had an endless supply of their stuff - my friends used to beg me for freebies 😁. You could spend a whole day in a shopping centre (we often did!). This one is very specific, but in Lewisham shopping centre, their Littlewoods had a great cafe - it had obviously been created in the 60s and everything was brown, orange and maroon. It had little booths with spotted Formica tables and the ceiling lights were glowing orange globes. I loved having lunch there with my mum. I think it’s a TKMaxx now 😥. Someone should have preserved that cafe interior, it was like stepping into Austen Powers!

Omg yes my Nan used to take me nearly every Saturday to Lewisham! Used to spend hours in the shopping centre play area!

@NinaDefoe

BoredZelda We’ll have to agree to disagree. As far as I remember out of town shopping retail parks appeared around the same time as (or even after) online shopping started to take off.

No, out of town retail parks were much earlier. More like the 90’s. Online shopping has taken off in the last decade.

Jane Norman and Morgan for me. Every secondary age girl had one of the plastic bags.