In My View by Eric Musgrave: Remembering Bernard Lewis
I have a lot of time for a person who gives me a straight answer to a straight question. Therefore I had a lot of time for Bernard Lewis, who died on 28 February, 18 days after his 100th birthday.
I recall hosting a small networking dinner at which he had graciously agreed to be guest of honour. As was his preference, he was not minded to make a speech but he was happy for me to interview him. It was around 2014 when there was a lot of heated coverage in the media about rising raw material prices, rising shipping costs, low consumer confidence, depressed sales, fall in the value of sterling, blah, blah, blah. It was, we were told, a perfect storm for the fashion industry, the like of which had never been seen before.
So what did Bernard, who had more than 60 years of experience of the trade by then, think to this panicky analysis?
Speaking in his usual quiet, precise, unhurried way he responded: “Does anyone seriously think that times now are as hard as they were when I started just after the Second World War, when half of London was a bomb site, clothes were rationed and it was almost impossible to source anything new?”
Well, that put paid to the “perfect storm” discussion very quickly.
He added that his attitude always was to just get on with what you had to do, no matter the circumstances.
Bernard worked for many years with his older brother David and his younger siblings Geoffrey and Godfrey. Referring to them all as Mr Lewis was confusing, so it was always Mr Bernard, Mr David and so on in the family firm.
I am convinced Mr Bernard did more than any other single person to create the modern fashion multiple system while developing Lewis Separates in the 1950s, Chelsea Girl in the 1970s and River Island in the 1980s and 1990s.
Among the many anecdotes I have heard about him over the years my favourite relates to another period of tough trading for the sector. After a large staff meeting, a concerned young employee asked the boss what he thought they should do. “I think we should produce more clothes that people want to buy,” was the softly-delivered answer.
Talk about keeping it simple!
I was lucky enough to develop a good relationship with this retailing legend over the last 20 years of his life. I would not claim to have been a friend, but we always got on well and he was generous with his time for me.
We first met in 2005 when I interviewed him just before he collected a lifetime achievement award from Drapers, where I was editorial head honcho. At that time I had been writing about the industry for 25 years but I had never met Bernard Lewis, never spoken to him, never read an interview with him and never seen a photo of him. The Lewis family, I had learned early in my career, did not talk to the press.
In 2003 and 2004 we had awarded first George Davies and then David Jones, respectively the creator of Next and its saviour, with lifetime achievement awards. Richard Bradbury, the MD of River Island, who I got on well with (although we tended to discuss soul music, not high street trading) suggested Bernard Lewis was worthy of the accolade.
OK, said I, but he will have to talk to us. Richard came back, Fine, but he will talk only to you.
Without being too grand, I must explain editorial directors, as I then was, do not write features but this was a special case. After hurriedly calling some contacts to get some background on the mystery man, I ventured to Chelsea House, the company’s HQ at Hanger Lane, west London that in typical Lewis style they had built from scratch in the mid-1970s.
I was prepared for my reclusive subject to be grumpy, evasive, even unfriendly, but he was none of those things. The sprightly 79-year-old was courteous, engaged and totally open about his long, astonishing career. He had a mind that was as sharp as a pin and an amazing memory for detail.
When he was a child, his family’s business was running fruit and veg stalls and shops in north London. Once I had told him my Saturday job as a teenager in Leeds was working in a greengrocer’s we were off and running, especially after I confirmed I used to add up the prices in my head. He approved of that.
The four-page feature compiled from our lengthy conversation that day can be read here. I was particularly pleased with the photograph of Bernard taken by Caroline Field – I deliberately wanted to have this quintessential product man pictured on the busy buying floor at River Island.
Fifteen years later I was very pleased to see this interview referred to extensively in A Family Business, the authorised 460-page biography Bernard had published in 2020 so his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren would have an official record of his and their remarkable story. Written by Catherine Blyth, it is a typically brilliant Lewis production.
Bernard Lewis in his design studio in 1983, photographed by Fashion Weekly
For quite some time I thought my interview was the first Bernard had given. I was annoyed to discover one in an issue of Fashion Weekly from 1983 – so mine was only the first in 22 years! As he told me, he had no desire to tell others the secrets of his success.
Post-2005, I spoke with him infrequently but was always given a warm response. In about 2007, when I was working with a couple of people on networking events for junior members of the fashion trade, I cheekily asked Bernard if he would mind me interviewing him at one of our gatherings. To my surprise he said yes – I later learned he was always very keen on developing talent in the business.
I was slightly embarrassed when I learned the venue for our chat was to be a pub in Camden. Bernard arrived in his chauffeur-driven car with his wife Vanessa (they were an inseparable pair from 1972 onwards) and their two young sons Sam and Jake. Bernard had older children - Leonard, Clive (both very active in the business) and Caroline – from his first marriage.
Bernard quietly looked around at the Victorian-era boozer and, wholly unfazed, commented to me: “I haven’t been in a pub for 30 years.” I could well believe it. The strange little event was a massive success, with the great man happily responding to any question from the floor.
In 2017 I asked for another favour. Could I introduce him to Oliver Shah, then the business editor of The Sunday Times? Of course I could and off we went to Chelsea House one afternoon. Olly was researching his brilliant expose of Philip Green, published as Damaged Goods in 2018, but naughtily we did not let on about that.
It turned out that Bernard did not know Green well. Presciently though, he commented that he didn’t think the then-owner of BHS and Arcadia had the intellectual ability to get himself out of the mess he had created. He was right, of course.
Oliver turned the chat into a fine mini-profile of Lewis that appeared in the ST on 7 January 2018 under the headline: He’s a dedicated retailer of fashion, aged 91. Bernard, by then life president of the family’s holding company, Lewis Trust Group, admitted he now only worked five days a week, not seven.
For me the most revealing anecdote of that afternoon was when the unshowy billionaire sitting with us recalled that in the 1930s his parents’ business had failed and the family was forced to do a moonlight flit from their old premises to a one-room flat.
With his beloved parents Lew and Clara in a bed, Bernard and three brothers slept together on the floor, each with their only set of clothes folded at the end of the mattress.
It was a sobering image. Given that sort of hinterland, it is easy to understand why Bernard was obsessively driven to create a business that provided a safe future for the family. He certainly achieved that.
Bernard Lewis speaks at The Twenty Club in 2022
My last encounter with this remarkable retailer came in 2022 when he agreed to my request to be guest of honour at the 125th anniversary dinner for The Twenty Club, the social gathering for senior industry executives. I interviewed him on stage before the sold-out crowd and despite being somewhat frail and having difficulty with the feedback between the mic and his hearing aids, he captivated the hushed audience with his typically wry, forthright and incisive views of fashion retailing past and present.
Bernard Lewis’ death marks the end of what many regard as the golden age of UK fashion retailing, the period before online selling upset the old order of things, when a bricks & mortar empire was required to dominate the market.
Unlike other high achievers, like the aforementioned George Davies and David Jones, who did great things within existing companies, Lewis created his empire from scratch, a true rags to riches adventure. It remains a mystery why he was never knighted for his services to retailing. I added my support to one application for such recognition.
Finally, I am very pleased I made a point of telling Bernard Lewis that he was by far the most impressive person I have met in the 46 years I’ve been writing about the industry.
He responded with a slight shrug of the shoulders, as if to say, Please yourself. You’re entitled to your opinion, Eric.
Like many, many others, I will miss Mr Bernard.
Main image: Bernard Lewis and Eric Musgrave in 2022
