Angie Gibson, 2011

Angie’s Goals

Women’s Business Dress (2004)

Angie Gibson, 21, has just started work in the Fashion Department at the John Lewis department store in Brent Cross, North London. She is following in the footsteps of her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, who were all members of the John Lewis Partnership.

As a graduate trainee, Angie works full time. She drives to work in the small car which her parents bought for her twenty-first birthday. It was also a present for passing all her university exams! She wears a navy or black suit at work which comes in two versions for women, one with a skirt, the other with trousers.

Female Fashion Department (2004)

Angie’s goal is to get on in the Partnership. She knows she needs to understand the stock and systems in this department and the others she will work in during her year’s training. She is looking forward to visiting other branches to see how they work and hopes that by the end of her training she’ll be experienced enough to be given her own section to manage.

Angie’s Department

Angie would like to start a family when she’s in her late-twenties, but plans to come back to work after maternity leave. By that time, she hopes to have settled down with a nice partner – she’s still not sure about marriage! – and be living in her own home. That means there’ll be half a house to pay for.

Haberdashery Department (1964)

Angie sells as many trousers and jeans as she does dresses, but very few hats, even fewer blouses, and absolutely no corsets or dress-making materials. When the John Lewis business was founded in the late nineteenth century, its main trade was selling dress fabrics. Wealthy women would then get their dressmakers to make their clothes or have them made up in the shop’s own workroom. Fabrics are now sold in a different department, but few people have their own dressmakers any more.

Young ladies’ lingerie is sold in a separate department; at the moment patterned tights and fancy stockings made in the Far East are very popular. When Angie’s granny Maria started selling clothes at John Lewis in 1948, almost all the stock was made in Britain – now clothes are manufactured all around the world.

Angie’s Interests

Men’s business dress

Most of Angie’s colleagues in the fashion department are girls, but there are a couple of young salesmen, plus the section manager Terry, who’s in his late twenties. The men’s workwear, or ‘business dress’, is very stylish and modern, nothing at all like traditional uniforms. Terry might be a guy, but he always likes to dress at the height of fashion. He buys as many beauty products as the women in his department.

Ladies sportswear

At weekends, Angie loves going to the cinema, or if the weather’s nice she plays football. John Lewis has a great outdoor pitch at their leisure centre in Berkshire so Angie can’t wait to go there. She’s also thinking about joining the sailing club. John Lewis has five ocean-going yachts based near its Southampton store. And if she gets seasick, Angie can always join the ten-pin bowling club. Young, free and single … John Lewis Partners are definitely spoilt for choice … and sportswear.