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.

Judas I remember Ozzie's as well.

I managed to avoid the communal changing room as I was young and skinny, so everything fitted!!! Oh, those were the days.

There would always be at least one small boy in there too, dragged in while his mother tried on clothes, looking absolutely agog at all the ladies taking their clothes off

I am old enough to remember them but it must have been so grim that I forget if I ever used them!

Oh dear, seems I'm a generation older, for whom the highlight of a visit to London would be the Biba shop, as teenagers we had no means to buy anything but were encouraged to try on as much as we wanted in spite of the lack of changing rooms. Looking back there were probably pretty clear lines of sight from the windows.

My adult self is torn between admiring my teenage self and being glad old age has fewer traps for the unwary.

To be fair though. I now use the click and collect service if I ever buy from M&S and have found a quite part of the upper floor close to but screened from the customer collection desk to have a quick try on if anything I might want to keep. Am absolutely confident that in one is looking these days.

God yes they were horrifying.

I also remember John Lewis not accepting credit cards , cash or shop card only ..my mother used to visit from Canada and want to buy things it so annoyed herbals JL was closed on a monday ..

JL was closed on a monday ..

Yes it was! @ggirl. I had forgotten this. Used to drive my mother round the bend. Whole weeks were planned around this one small, random fact

You mean JL is now open on Monday?
How long has this outrage been going on?

M&S never used to take cards either, for a long time.

@annewidicombe I was there too!

Oh yes that's right about JL being closed on Mondays.

Was weird shopping in Brent Cross on a Monday - the centre was open but not JL!

I also remember the hell of communal changing rooms in Dorothy Perkins.

I remember going to one in Edinburgh (may have been Top Shop) to try on a strapless dress for the Sixth year dance - and the horror as it fell down due to my flat chest.

Yes, Miss Selfridge, I never wore a bra in those days and always felt self conscious in the communal changing room. It is no less embarrassing at the gym though. I went into the communal changing room there a week or so back and someone I didn't know just peeled her top off when I was inches away just walking past.

River Island, Princes St Edinburgh. I'm sure that was communal changing but also had a few changing rooms on the shop floor that looked like wooden ship cabins.

And bay trading. I'm sure John Lewis had communal rooms as well as cubicles...

The floors of the communal rooms were about 6 inches deep in discarded clothing. The horrors of losing your own top in the melee was constant.

I'd forgotten the horror of those. There was a really grim one with filthy carpets and hideous mirrors I used to go into. Tammy girl?

M&S were one of the only shops to give a refund and not a credit note if the clothes didn't fit or you changed your mind in the late 80's. Some of the secretaries at work used to run out of money before Payday, so they'd pop into M&S and buy some clothes using a cheque to pay and then take the stuff back later that day and get cash refunds as they knew the cheque would take a few days to clear and longer at weekends betting on their pay coming through before the cheque cleared.

Yes, Bay Trading and Tammy Girl and Miss Selfridge in Chester