General changes in life, 1920s - present

Changes in family life

By the time, Angie started work at John Lewis in 2011, her mum Shelley was a 25-year John Lewis veteran and a senior clerical officer at the store. Shelley had taken time off to have Angie and her older brother Elvis (guess who father Bobby’s favourite singer is?) but in both cases went back to work quickly.

The changing face of family life over the last 20 years is demonstrated by the big increase of women having children much later. For most of the twentieth century, the majority of women used to start their families in their twenties. Fertility rates for women aged 35-39 have doubled over the last two decades, as have figures for the number of women over 40 who are still childless.

There has also been a reduction in the number of married couples, with the number of women under the age of 50 who were married going down from two-thirds to one half since the mid-1980s. Plus, there’s a much higher number of women who cohabit (live with a partner) like Shelly does with Bobby, or perhaps only get married when they start a family.

Changes in education

Probably the biggest change of the last 20 years is in education. Both at GCSE and ‘A’ level, girls now perform better – 25 per cent of girls get two or more A levels compared to 20 per cent of boys, and not just in traditional ‘girls’ subjects’ like English, history and languages, but also mathematics and science.

This has had a major effect on numbers going to university. Nearly five times as many women entered higher education courses in 1999 (599,000) as in the early 1970s, whereas figures for men have only doubled (528,000 compared to 241,000 in 1971). Angie was the very first member of her family – male or female – to go to university. And the first one to borrow her mum’s clothes!

It would have been unthinkable for Shelley to wear the same clothes as her mum Maria, but now she thinks nothing of borrowing clothes from Angie, and vice versa. If there’s one other thing that makes modern fashion different from the past, it’s the amazing range of choice. When Angie’s granny started work at John Lewis, the clothes sold all followed certain rules – now fashion means very different things to different people.

Changes in fashion

The clothes people wear today are more about personal choice. Just because Nicole Kidman or Madonna look great in a corset doesn’t mean all young girls have to wear them. Many teenagers prefer a less glamorous look like MTV heroine Kelly Osbourne or pop star Pink.

Modern trends often reflect past fashions – miniskirts and thigh-high boots or hippie chic clothes from the 1960s, disco or punk styles from the 1970s, or the new romantic look from the 1980s. All these styles are reborn again in today’s John Lewis fashion departments. It wouldn’t be difficult to find photos of pop stars like Beyoncé or Madonna wearing all these different kinds of clothes from various eras.

Fashion became more and more international during the second half of the twentieth century – with Paris, New York, Milan, and London as the major fashion capitals. The market for ‘couture’ clothing (exclusive made-to-measure designs for rich clients) has shrunk, and smaller design-led companies producing original ready-to-wear clothes aimed at a younger market have become more typical.