Liberty, commonly known as Liberty's, is a luxury department store in London, England. It is located on Great Marlborough Street in the West End of London. The building spans from Carnaby Street on the East to Kingly Street on the West, where it forms a three storey archway over the Northern entrance to the Kingly Street mall that houses the Liberty Clock in its centre. Liberty is known around the world for its close connection to art and culture, but it is most famous for its bold and floral print fabrics. The vast mock-Tudor store also sells men's, women's and children's fashion, beauty and homewares from a mix of high-end and emerging brands and labels.
The store is known to spot and champion young designers at the start of their careers, and many now-prominent brands were first available at Liberty. The store played essential role in spreading and popularizing the Modern Style. This continues Liberty's long reputation for working with British artists and designers. Liberty’s makes a cameo appearance in Enola Holmes.
Arthur Lasenby Liberty was born in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, in 1843. He was employed by Messrs Farmer & Rogers in Regent Street in 1862,[4] the year of the International Exhibition. By 1874, rejected for a partnership, and imbued by his 10 years experience, he decided to start a business of his own. With a £2,000 loan from his future father-in-law, in 1875, he accepted the lease of half a shop at 218a Regent Street with three staff members.
The shop sold ornaments, fabric and objets d'art’’, especially from Japan and the East. Within eighteen months, he had repaid the loan and acquired the second half of 218 Regent Street. As the business grew, neighbouring properties were bought and added.[5] In 1884, he introduced the costume department, directed by Edward William Godwin (1833–1886), a distinguished architect and a founding member of The Costume Society. He and Arthur Liberty created in-house apparel to challenge the fashions of Paris.
In 1885, 142–144 Regent Street was acquired and housed the ever-increasing demand for carpets and furniture. The basement was named the Eastern Bazaar, and it was the vending place for what was described as "decorative furnishing objects". He named the property Chesham House, after the place in which he grew up. The store became the most fashionable place to shop in London, and Liberty fabrics were used for both clothing and furnishings.
Liberty art fabrics advertisement, May 1888
In November 1885, Liberty brought forty-two villagers from India to stage a living village of Indian artisans. Liberty's specialised in Oriental goods, in particular imported Indian silks, and the aim of the display was to generate both publicity and sales for the store.[6] In 1889, Oscar Wilde, a regular client of the store, wrote "Liberty's is the chosen resort of the artistic shopper".[7]
During the 1890s, Liberty built strong relationships with many English designers. Many of these designers, including Archibald Knox, practised the artistic styles known as Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau, and Liberty helped develop Art Nouveau through his encouragement of such designers. The company became associated with this new style, to the extent that in Italy, Art Nouveau became known as the Stile Liberty, after the London shop.
1920s
The Tudor revival building was built so that trading could continue while renovations were being completed on the other premises, and in 1924, this store was constructed from the timbers of two ships: HMS Impregnable (formerly HMS Howe) and HMS Hindustan. The frontage on Great Marlborough Street is the same length as the Hindustan. It became a Grade II* listed building in 1972.[8]
The emporium was designed by Edwin Thomas Hall and his son, Edwin Stanley Hall. They designed the building at the height of the 1920s fashion for Tudor revival. The shop was engineered around three light wells that formed the main focus of the building. Each of these wells was surrounded by smaller rooms to create a homey feel. Many of the rooms had fireplaces and some still exist.
The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner was very critical of the building's architecture, saying: "The scale is wrong, the symmetry is wrong. The proximity to a classical façade put up by the same firm at the same time is wrong, and the goings-on of a store behind such a façade (and below those twisted Tudor chimneys) are wrongest of all".[9]
Arthur Liberty died in 1917, seven years before the completion of his shops.
Post-war
Liberty, during the 1950s, continued its tradition for fashionable and eclectic design. All departments in the shop had a collection of both contemporary and traditional designs. New designers were promoted and often included those still representing the Liberty tradition for handcrafted work.
During the 1960s, extravagant and Eastern influences once again became fashionable, as well as the Art Deco style, and Liberty adapted its furnishing designs from its archive.
In 1996, Liberty announced the closure of its twenty shops outside London, and instead focused on smaller outlets at airports.[10]
Since 1988, Liberty has had a subsidiary in Japan which sells Liberty-branded products in major Japanese shops. It also sells Liberty fabrics to international and local fashion stores with bases in Japan.
2000s
Liberty's London store was sold for £41.5million (equivalent to £70.3million in 2023) and then leased back by the firm in 2009, to pay off debts ahead of a potential sale of the company.[11] Subsequently, in 2010, Liberty was taken over by private equity firm BlueGem Capital, in a deal worth £32million (equivalent to £51.8million in 2023).[12]
TV documentary
From 2 December 2013, Liberty was the focus of a three-part hour-long episode TV documentary series titled Liberty of London, airing on Channel 4.[13][14] The documentary follows Ed Burstell (Managing Director) and the department's retail team in the busy lead up to Christmas 2013.[13]
Channel 4 further commissioned a second series of the documentary on 28 October 2014. This series featured four, one hour-long episodes based on six months worth of unprecedented footage. Series two commenced on 12 November 2014.[15]
Sir Arthur Lasenby Liberty was a British merchant, and the founder of Liberty & Co.
Regent Street is a major shopping street in the West End of London. It is named after George, the Prince Regent and was laid out under the direction of the architect John Nash and James Burton. It runs from Waterloo Place in St James's at the southern end, through Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus, to All Souls Church. From there Langham Place and Portland Place continue the route to Regent's Park.
Bond Street in the West End of London links Piccadilly in the south to Oxford Street in the north. Since the 18th century the street has housed many prestigious and upmarket fashion retailers. The southern section is Old Bond Street and the longer northern section New Bond Street, a distinction not generally made in everyday usage.
Holt, Renfrew & Co., Limited is a Canadian luxury department store chain founded in 1837 by William S. Henderson. The original William Ashton & Co. store in Quebec City, Lower Canada operated as a fur shop. The company serviced the greater North American and European markets with its mail order catalog beginning in the late 1800s, and was appointed Furriers in Ordinary to several members of the British royal family from 1886 to 1921.
The Galeries Lafayette is an upmarket French department store chain, the biggest in Europe. Its flagship store is on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris but it now operates a number of locations in France and other countries. In 2019, Galeries Lafayette recorded earnings of over five billion euros. It is a part of the company Groupe Galeries Lafayette and has been a member of the International Association of department stores since 1960.
Great Marlborough Street is a thoroughfare in Soho, Central London. It runs east of Regent Street past Carnaby Street towards Noel Street.
Nicole Miller is an American fashion designer and businesswoman.
The Modern Style is a style of architecture, art, and design that first emerged in the United Kingdom in the mid-1880s. It was the first Art Nouveau style worldwide, and it represents the evolution of the Arts and Crafts movement which was native to Great Britain. The Modern Style provided the base and intellectual background for the Art Nouveau movement and was adapted by other countries, giving birth to local variants such as Jugendstil and the Vienna Secession. It was cultivated and disseminated through the Liberty department store and The Studio magazine.
Désirée Lucienne Lisbeth Dulcie Day OBE RDI FCSD was one of the most influential British textile designers of the 1950s and 1960s. Day drew on inspiration from other arts to develop a new style of abstract pattern-making in post-war British textiles, known as ‘Contemporary’ design. She was also active in other fields, such as wallpapers, ceramics and carpets.
Designers Guild is an international home and lifestyle company with a flagship store and showrooms on Kings Road and Marylebone High Street in London, as well as offices in London, Paris, and Munich.
F. Schumacher & Co. is a privately held textile company based in New York City and Fort Mill, South Carolina. Schumacher primarily designs and manufactures fabrics, wall covering, trimming, floor covering, finished goods and paint for the interior design industry in the United States.
The Italian city of Milan is recognised internationally as one of the world's most important fashion capitals, along with Paris, New York and London.
Magasin is a Danish chain of department stores. It has seven department stores with its flagship store located on Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen. The company is a subsidiary of the German department store retailer Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf, Magasin du Nord has been a founder and remained a member of the International Association of Department Stores since 1928.
Leonard Francis Wyburd was a British painter, interior designer and furniture designer. He was broadly part of the Arts & Crafts movement, and the head of Liberty's Furnishing and Decoration Studio from its foundation in 1883 until he left in 1903.
John Michael Ingram was an influential British menswear designer and retailer of the 1950s and '60s who founded the John Michael fashion brand, followed by a range of successful retail concepts, before establishing one of the first fashion forecasting agencies in the 1970s.
Neisha Crosland is a British-born, London-based textile designer, who works in the fields of furnishing fabric, wallpaper and interiors products. Her designs have featured in the ranges of British brands such as Osborne & Little and John Lewis. Internationally, her work is also recognised and she has a collection for Hankyu department stores in Japan.
Rayne was a British manufacturer known for high-end and couture shoes. Founded in 1899 as a theatrical costumier, it diversified into fashion shoes in the 1920s.
Kingly Street is a street in London's Soho district. It runs north to south from Liberty's and Foubert's Place to Beak Street, in parallel to, and between, Regent Street and Carnaby Street.
William Morris (1834-1898), a founder of the British Arts and Crafts movement, sought to restore the prestige and methods of hand-made crafts, including textiles, in opposition to the 19th century tendency toward factory-produced textiles. With this goal in mind, he created his own workshop and designed dozens of patterns for hand-produced woven and printed cloth, upholstery, and other textiles.
Bridgepointe Shopping Center is a shopping mall in San Mateo, California, United States. Opened in 1982 as San Mateo Fashion Island, it was originally an enclosed shopping mall featuring JCPenney, Bullock's, Liberty House, and Montgomery Ward as its anchor stores. Following the closures of Bullock's and Liberty House, the mall went into decline throughout the 1990s, leading to its closure and demolition in favor of a power center. Bridgepointe Shopping Center is owned and managed by CBRE Group. Major tenants of Bridgepointe Shopping Center include The Home Depot and Target.
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