What's it like working in a fashion store when you're young, inexperienced and unable to fold a cardigan? Guardian writers share their stories of life behind the retail counter
Shopgirls TV review
Shopgirls TV review
I would love to say I became a Saturday shop girl because of my lifelong love of fashion, but the truth is more tawdry. In 1987, bars and pubs were annoyingly fussy about proof that you were 16, and I was 14 and looked, if anything, younger; so shops it was. I started out selling records, then on the hosiery floor of a department store; there was a Christmas-holidays stint folding angora cardigans in Hampstead to I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus on a loop. But by the time I was 17, I had found a job I loved at a fancy women's boutique just off Portobello Road; I worked there at weekends until I left school, and most of my university holidays.
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