Who remembers shop changing rooms in the 80s/90s

[thedevilinablackdress]

The baffling fad for open plan changing areas...i.e. no cubicles. Or only one or two that were always full (obviously)
Horrors
I think it was a cunning plan to increase sales beacause strangers would tell you that you liked nice in something to be polite, even if you didn't.

I remember this well. Always assumed it was to prevent shoplifting.

And it gets people through the changing room quicker, less chance of someone hogging a room for half an hour.

Oh yes, I'd forgotten this. I remember trying on baby doll dresses in a communal changing room in C&A. I want too bothered as a teen, but my word I would hate it now as a 40 year old.

I worked at Laura Ashley for a while in the mid-90s. There was shoplifting every weekend - always done in the cubicles.

What Every Woman Wants - Glasgow. Changing rooms rough as anything, but actually a right laugh as well. Happy memories for me...gazes wistfully into far distance...

OH god. This was awful. As a young, awkward, prematurely developed, chubby adolescent girl, having your mum say things like "I didn't have a waist at your age either" while other middle-aged women offered useful advice, and a 20-something with a perfect body stripped off 2 feet away.

KILL ME NOW.

Yes I do remember! I can remember going in the upstairs tiny communal changing room in Colchester topshop! Hideous!
You always had those people who insisted on parading around in their undies

One word-Snob

God it was dreadful and there was always someone you knew while trying to squeeze into something

Oh my goodness, What Every Woman Wants there was one in Croydon, I’d completely forgotten!

I knew what this was going to be about from the title! I was trying to remember the other day when it changed. It was dire.

Yes I do remember! I can remember going in the upstairs tiny communal changing room in Colchester topshop! Hideous!

Snap!!

yes.
just like the changing rooms in every gym ive ever looked at.
1 cubicle.
why?

Oh god, Top shop, Argyle st, Glasgow. Small room, mirrors all the way round. Your worst nightmare.

I'd forgotten about/blanked them out my mind! Hideous just hideous and often a bit whiffy. Am so glad it's cubicles now so you can actually try things on properly.
I'm sure M&S didn't have fitting rooms for ages. My mum would buy stuff and return it; I remember her trying it on in a different shop. This was a major city centre store too.

Topshop and all the high street young womens clothing stores had communal rooms with hooks along a board on the wall - it was crap.

Smaller stores often had a cubicle but with western cowboy style doors that were louvred and only covered your middle. Jigsaw in High St Ken had cubicles but no mirrors in them - you had to come out to view yourself in a mirror (where everyone could see you in skirts and dresses that were too tight). Many a buying mistake was made in haste and many things not fully tried on as some gorgeous girl would stare scathingly at you. John Lewis and shops like Jaeger with proper cubicles with mirrors felt like incredible luxury. M&S and Primark had no changing facilities. M&S had their famous no quibble return which a lot of shops didn't have (they only gave 6 month credit notes).

There was a shop called 'What She Wants' in Putney which was not only communal and strip lit, but also had no curtain or door between it and the main shop. You had to be careful about where you stood.

Also with hideous, soul destroying changing rooms were:

Omni in Richmond
Chelsea Girl in Kingston
Jane Norman in High Street Ken
ALL branches of River Island/Top Shop and New Look when it launches
and
Mark One in Shepherds Bush (think this was the worst)

And everything was grubby as well.

Yes i remember top shop well and miss selfridge. As a pp said it was ok as a teenager but what about our parents shops, they can't have been like that too can they?

I remember that, Bay Trading in Staines had the communal bit and a couple of curtained off cubicles.

The moment I clicked on this thread I remembered Bay Trading in Staines, it must have been particularly traumatising

Also New Look had a communal changing room that was the size of a school hall.

I remember Saturday afternoons spending my hard earned cash in Chelsea Girl in Bristol in the 80's.

If the horror of changing in front of complete strangers wasn't enough you also got asphyxiated by a cloud of Anais Anais or Poison perfume mixed with hairspray (because of course you wanted to be at your best when you left the shop in search of the object of your affections ).

I'd forgotten about those!! Can't remember many after about 1995 though?

River island on argyle street in Glasgow was absolute carnage by 4pm on a Saturday. It stank, the floor was covered in crap!

@thenavigator What everyone wants in Glasgow is my memory of these changing rooms too!...there was a roomful of cheap neon clothes and a smell of sweat and stinky feet...

I had a Saturday job in the 80's in a Department store. The Miss Selfridge and French Connection concessions for the younger market had communal changing rooms but the Ladies Clothing Department with Windsmoor, Frank Usher clothing and the like had large cubicles with mirrors and an outside shielded area with mirrors.

My teenage Dd doesn't believe we ever would have put up with communal rooms.

I really wanted a neon top from what everyone wants but my mum said they were common!