Can I Help You, Madam? The Autobiography of fashion buyer, Ethyle Campbell

The working life of a women in retail in the 1930s was tough, but not beyond the no-nonsense Ethyle Campbell. First published in 1938 and quite unlike any other book about the rag trade in the ʼ30s, this semi-autobiographical account of Campbell’s time as a fashion buyer for a London department store rings with her slangy informative banter as she plies her trade, often hilariously, between the shop floor, the couture houses of Paris and factories of New York.



The realities of the retail trade are interspersed with extraordinary vignettes, including a shoplifter with capacious bloomers stuffed with pilfered undies, and wealthy but unwashed society elite sporting filthy corsets and smelling so much that staff refused to serve them. Fed up with customers returning worn frocks as unsuitable and never forgetting that the customer is always the enemy, a determined Campbell splashes water over the dress of one notorious culprit in the wash room at the Savoy.

This book is part of the V&A Fashion Perspectives Series. Selected by V&A publishing in consultation with our world-leading fashion curators, the Fashion Perspectives series offers an access all areas pass to the glamorous world of fashion. Models, magazine editors and the designers themselves take readers behind the scenes at the likes of Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the golden age of couture.