Subscribe All we need to recapture from that era is some of its self-confidence
By Admin
"All we need to recapture from that era is some of its self-confidence." The past may be a foreign country but we can learn from the things they did differently there."On balance I'd rather live now, but with the get-up-and-go of the old days," said Joyce, as she and Betty scrutinised the final photographs. "Yes," said Betty, "and don't forget about improvements to health and equal pay and all that."The two women peered at the photograph of the modern housing which had replaced the old dairy with which they began. "Actually," said Joyce, "if you look at even the very latest photograph you can see some new houses which have been pulled down since the pictures were taken.""And quite right too," said Betty "They hadn't been up long but they were terrible And anyway, it was time for a change". Vittorio Radice is so cool he doesn't look down when he steps off an escalator. Nor does he swerve and sidestep the orange-faced harpies waiting to ambush the unwary with the latest fragrance in the perfume hall.
Radice, the 42 year old, Prada-wearing, Arsenal-supporting managing director of Selfridges, is as groovy as chief executives come, but he's not the kind of man you would spray without asking. Up on men's fashion, jumpers are folded furiously at his approach (he has a big thing about folding) and staff stand a little straighter as they return his cheery salute. You begin to see why, when Radice, who has the impressive knack of being both affable and absolutely alert, swoops on a counter which could do with a polish. Nothing is said; there is the merest exhalation of annoyance as Radice swipes at the offending dust with his cuff, but if I were the salesperson on that stand, I'd be going to bed with a duster in my hand for quite some time to come. Since his arrival at Selfridges in March 1996, Radice has masterminded a total revamp of the doughty old lady of Oxford Street. Prior to the appointment of this charismatic Milanese, whose elastic vowels can make the word "marketing" sound romantic, there was more than a touch of Grace Brothers about the store, which opened in 1909 and preserved its aura of double-gusseted respectability well into the Nineties. If you had a hankering for say, coronation chicken or a pair of driving gloves, you might tootle down to Selfridges. Today, after its pounds 100m makeover, it is all sushi and pink pashminas."The whole concept of shopping has changed," says Radice.
"People don't need things any more because they already have everything." If this is true, no one has told the customer in the La Perla underwear concession who is scooping up pounds 30 knickers like she's auditioning for Supermarket Sweep. When she can't find her size in ecru, she looks desolate, physically diminished Radice understands this. "Shopping is less and less about commodity and more and more about emotion," he explains. "Today, when you buy a jumper, you're not buying it because you need a jumper.
It's because you want to feel that you're riding a horse in the middle of the Arizona desert, and when you buy the Ralph Lauren jumper you're halfway there." In the mouth of almost any other marketing man, this could sound smug and sneering With Radice, it sounds like a personal invitation. "The reason I love marketing is because I like making people happy. Spending money is fantastic."It is fantastically un-British, this sunny materialism of Radice's, but it seems that we are gradually losing our Calvinist inhibitions. Radice came to Selfridges from Habitat, where he sold a dream of cream sofas to a nation of late-night curry eaters and doubled the turnover in three years. His three-year masterplan for Selfridges, which de-merged from the Sears group in 1998, is already showing dividends.
At a time when most established city stores are feeling the pinch from out-of-town upstarts, Selfridges has announced a 15 per cent profit for the last financial year. Radice gives the breezy impression that "recession" is some quaint English notion he has yet to master. "In the ten years I have been in this country, I have seen Britain become much more receptive to new ideas," he says "Just look at the success of restaurants in London recently. Why shouldn't the same thing happen in retail."The bloodless tag of "marketing man' does not sit well on Radice.