Shopping, Seduction and Mr Selfridge
"When the visionary American retailer Harry Gordon Selfridge, rightfully known as 'the showman of shopping', moved from Chicago to open his eponymous store in Oxford Street, he brought with him his heartfelt belief in the sex appeal of shopping." "In the process Selfridge became rich and famous, But his weakness for high living: fast women, grand houses, extravagant entertaining and an insatiable addiction to gambling, brought about his downfall." "Thirty years after he opened his revolutionary store, Harry Gordon Selfridge was ousted in a Board Room coup. In 1947, he died virtually penniless in a small flat in Putney. His memorial is in Oxford Street, where the towering Ionic columns of Selfridges stand witness to the achievement of his dreams." "In this book, which explores the rise of twentieth-century consumerism, Lindy Woodhead tells the extraordinary story of a revolution in shopping and the rise and fall of a retail prince."--BOOK JACKET.