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'.

@TheYearOfSmallThings

Ah yes, I was in Bluewater shopping centre this week, meeting a friend who lives down there now. We both had our kids along and were remembering the first time we went there (drove down from London when we should have been studying).

It was nearly Christmas and I remember the excitement of Sephora and Bath and Body Works, and shopping in Kookai and Morgan. It was partly because we were young and everything was exciting, but the place is now a shadow of what it was then. I suppose we didn't spend enough to keep it all going, but of course we didn't have it to spend!

Bluewater really is just crap now :(

Kitchen spoils
Tammy girl
Chelsea girl
Old style department stores
Woolworths

Nostalgia is never pointless OP! I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post, you painted such a picture!

La Senza! That was a good one.

Oh yes. They did lovely PJs.

Tammy girl was epic! Expensive and I would get gift vouchers for my birthday

I loved Boots when it had everything. Books, records, kitchen stuff, photo dept, pet stuff…..

Until very recently we had a Pier wine cabinet. We passed it on within the family. Still as good as new.

I loved Tammy Girl, Woolies, Tower Records, the Warner Bros shop that used to be on Regent Street, C&A, Our Price, Borders bookshops, and Morgan.

God I loved all this stuff. My friend had a whole collection of the Body Shop animal soaps which she never used, we just got them out and smelt them and we all had the tin pencil case with 'Save the Earth' or whatever on it.

When I moved to a big city and tried on tons of quirky shoes in Shelleys.
Before that admiring all the wacky Doc Marten designs in the 'alternative' shoe shop that had loads of skater trainers and massive platform shoes.

C&A was amazing.
Habitat we always used to go in and buy 50p shot glasses to keep our makeup brushes in (not posh ones, free with Bliss, most likely).

and Benneton, for a naice jumper...hmm

I was in Benetton this week with DS(7), and I got us a naice jumper each!

OMG the pier.

I was about to buy my first house when our nearest pier closed and I remember they had the most gorgeous mirror which I never managed to buy

Oh yes C & A Clockhouse…..Also Allders was great.

@SnowD

There was a big HMV in Croydon until fairly recently and my teenage dds enjoyed browsing and buying until it closed. Croydon was brilliant in the 80s when I was a teenager and it was still good in the early 2000s. I remember there was a bistro at the top of the whitgift selling raspberry Belgian beer. I liked the Thorntons cafe and Books etc too. 80s Croydon was a world away from what it is now. So run down and a lot of shops empty. The big H&M that my teenage dds liked has closed now. There was going to be a Westfield built but won't be now. There's still the big Marks and Primark and waterstones

@SnowD - I'm from near Croydon and moved back near there when I bought my property a few years ago.

in the 80's/90's Croydon still had the new Drummond Centre and then later on in the 2000s Centrale which linked to the back of the Drummond Centre.

Was the bistro in the Whitgift centre near the pub? I vaguely recall the bistro if it's that one. The Books etc - was that the one where you could buy or look at books and read in their cafe before buying them (or after?). I vaguely recall the Thorntons cafe too. The big HMV was in the Drummond Centre part at the top or then bottom IIRC. Drummond Centre had a big glass lift and I think fountains which was very glamourous for the late 80s. Going there was an experience and day out whether with mum or friends. There was a Sock Shop there where I went with a French exchange student friend to buy socks.

Agreed there's still the big M&S, Primark and Waterstones but it's not quite the same though the M&S has a cafe. Part of Croydon's issue is at has very little history and the streets and offices have gradually become dilapidated.

@thewhatsit - my mum never really liked shopping but did like Sloane Street for shoe shops, Tiger Tiger and The Natural Shoe Shop. We used to have trips to London but more to Covent Garden and Neal Street to certain shops. She always liked boutiques like Sitrling Cooper in Streatham and Pratts (John Lewis) for clothes, shoes and haberdashery. And book shops (there was a small one down a side street opposite Pratts).

My mum recalls going to Kingston on Thames as a child in presumably early 1950s/late 1940s to Bentalls to buy a dinner service with her uncle and it was a day out. Kingston is still quite nice now but has lost a lot of its charm. I used to love going there 2000s to meet a friend who lived nearby, to Karen Millen, Oasis, Paperchase, the Apple Market and other shops like Habitat and having a browse, coffee, clothes shopping and hair colour for her if she was doing that.

There seems not a lot to do there now but you can spend money if you like, but quality generally has gone down and department stores aren't quite the same.

@Loopytiles

Ooh, good OP! Think it was the excitement of youth, the social element, and that there was no online shopping, so shops’ stock was a surprise.

I loved Habitat and would sit on a fab sofa with friends slurping McDonalds milkshakes, we often got kicked out.

My first set of crockery was from Habitat, white with an orange stripe. All long gone now, but every so often I repot a plant and find some broken bits I have used for drainage!

I still use huge circular paper lampshades, got into the habit very young and now can’t break it..........

I can relate to so many of the posts here. I was in college from '89 to '93 and we used to love skipping off classes wandering around the shops in our local shopping centre. One of the shops sold interior decor items and trinkets. These were very popular at the time www.lot-art.com/auction-lots/Chinese-Three-Treasures-of-Fuzhou-Cork-Carving/19cin050m036-chinese_three-27.2.19-ebth. I remember the floating tea lights from the OP. And of course, the aforementioned Athena shop. Followed by coffee and doughnuts in Dunkin' Donuts. We spent hours and hours wandering around the shops but didn't actually buy very much which may be a clue as to why the shops didn't survive. I feel a lot of nostalgia when I look back but that may be due to the fact that we were relatively carefree back then and didn't have to worry about much beyond the deadline for the next college assignment or whether the guy we fancied fancied us back . And of course, we didn't have to drive there so we didn't have to negotiate traffic and car parks. We just hopped on a bus to college and then hopped on a bus home again.

I still love shopping in person. For me it's an experience. I like to see the item with my own eyes and (in the case of clothes and shoes) try them on and make sure they fit/suit me. If you walk into a shop, you can scan the racks or shelves quickly and hone in on the thing(s) you like. If you're looking online you might have to scroll past hundreds of items, to find something you like. And even then, the actual item might not live up to expectations. Also, returning unwanted items is very time consuming - trying to get to the post office during the working day or on a Saturday morning - my local post office closes at lunchtime on a Saturday. I like going for a cuppa or lunch to rest my feet and then carrying home my shopping bags at the end of the shopping session - tired but happy. Online shopping will always be a soulless experience by comparison. Also, I have fond memories of going shopping with my Mam on a Saturday, so it's a link to the past also - before I got too cool to hang out with her. But I seem to be a dying breed.

I remember C&A always used to sell lots of skiing clothes. I only knew one person who went skiing. This was in Kingston so maybe lots of skiers around there (is a wealthy area)

I got my fingerless neon pink gloves, neon patterned T-shirt with bits cut out from C&A with my tiny black low worn sash/skirt I really thought I pulled the Madonna look off

@sansucre

I miss late 80s Covent Garden - the General Store, Flip, Neal Street East and Argon to name just a few stores, all of which had disappeared by the mid-late 90s (although NSE might have clung on until toe early 2000s. And speaking of the 2000s, used to love Koh Samui too but the service was so dreadful that I'm not surprised they shut up shop for good).

It's interesting the now shopping is considered to be a leisure activity, so many shops are missing the mark completely. Everything is so identikit, it's depressing.

@sansucre - I used to go to Covent Garden a lot. A boyfriend of one of my mum's friends, Nicholas Carr-Saunders founded Neals Yard and we used to go to his wacky inventor houses/gardens.

Which one was Argon? Was there another cafe like The Stockpot there? I'm pleased that Freuds bar is or was still at the other end of Neal Sreet - near the Oasis Leisure Centre.

Neal Street East if I recall is a bit like Pearl River department store or as it was, in New York.

The Pier, Habitat when it was a huge shop and had gorgeous stuff, there was a shop Maidstone is an shopping centre that when I first left home sold all sorts of stuff for the home at rock bottom prices, can’t remember the name of it, also the Merchant Chandler, and more recently I miss Laura Ashley, especially their curtains, I bought some online a year or so ago and it wasn’t the Laura Ashley I knew and the fabric was almost like plastic, yuk. Oh and Snob, I loved their clothes and the Brighton store. Richard Shops, and a whole host of shoe shops that I can’t remember the name of other than Dolcis. Plus proper department stores, Like Debenhams but back in the ‘old days’ when it was a good proper store. I miss the stores like Debenhams in Eastbourne and Canterbury, up stairs, round corners, departments here and there in old buildings, lovely cafes squirrelled away sometimes with sea views.

Virgin records. When I first started going out with DH we used to meet up there every Saturday to look through the new releases - showing my age now.

@OhWhyNot

I remember C&A always used to sell lots of skiing clothes. I only knew one person who went skiing. This was in Kingston so maybe lots of skiers around there (is a wealthy area)

I got my fingerless neon pink gloves, neon patterned T-shirt with bits cut out from C&A with my tiny black low worn sash/skirt I really thought I pulled the Madonna look off

@OhWhyNot - is this Kingston on Thames or the one in Hull?!

I recall Wimbledon nearby in 70s/80s - one of the first Next shops with a cafe upstairs was there. In 70s/80s were lots of clothes shops of the day but can't recall the names... can see them. Before Central Court shopping centre opened. And friend of my parents owned a toy shop specialising in wooden toys in the Village.

I still use huge circular paper lampshades, got into the habit very young and now can’t break it..........

No need to break the habit. Move to Walthamstow and you will be bang on trend with a gigantic paper lantern.

There was a big Habitat shop in Liverpool in the late 70's/early 80's, we used to buy paper lampshades for our bedrooms (about the only thing I could afford as a teenager from there).

I used to love the Christmas displays in BHS; they just seemed magical at the time.
And the body shop bath pearls - I kept them on permanent display in my room for years, dusting them like an ornament! Never occurred to me to use them!
I was so disappointed when I popped into a body shop recently; I was ready to buy the mini banana shampoos and ice-cream shower gels but it had all gone very upmarket!

Golf ng even further back, I can remember Derry & Toms and their lovely roof-garden restaurant. It became Biba. Marshall & Snelgrove, too, on very rare (steam) train trips south.

I’m a shopping aficionado who came of age in the 90s. I thought it was just me who has changed and didn’t find shopping so enjoyable any more. I live in London and travel around a lot to see what different areas of the city have to offer.

What comes through on these threads is that we used to have easy access to a whole array of mid range shops which broadly suited a wide section of the population. Now there are high end shops, and we might aspire to have one or two items from there, and there are low end shops with wares that are so easy come, easy go that they become meaningless. The ones in between are clearly struggling with online competition and in terms of a shopping experience also kind of competing with themselves.

But I also think what has changed is the speed with which children grow up these days. So whereas some bath beads from the Body Shop might have been of interest to a 14 year old then, now many of them want a full face of contour learned via a YouTuber or TikTokker. Girls now look sharper and much more aware of their appearance than I ever was. I’d say the Glossier palace in Covent Garden is almost the new Body Shop, that’s how far things have changed..

Me I miss the department stores the most, there are a handful of independents left in London and you always find something you didn’t know you needed in your life. Which as a PP said is how you encourage more spending, something you can’t really emulate online.

It was my New Years resolution to buy less clothing in 2022 (which is common and both a reaction to our obsession with over consumption and further damaging to retailers - but they have brought it on themselves); but really it should be only buy in person. I’ve realised my most successful buys are those I got from real shops, often just passing through/browsing. Whereas I’ve wasted days of my life packing up parcels to return.

@Florenz

Shops have really taken their eye off the ball in the 2000s, going shopping used to be fun and enjoyable, now it is drudgery, it's no wonder so many people prefer to shop online.

Shops need to up their game in the same way that pubs and cinemas have. Going into a shop needs to become an experience, it shouldn't be about just going in and buying something.

Wouldn't prices go up? Shops are having a hard time competing with online retailers, providing an experience would just be an extra cost.