This article is taken from the July 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £25.
Like all right-minded Trots, I’d always assumed that the department store, Liberty, was named according to some freedom through capitalism-type ethos, which — unlike most Trots — I am obviously totally down with.
Not so! Turns out, there was an enterprising draper’s son called Arthur Lasenby Liberty with a penchant for Eastern clobber knocking about Regent Street in the second half of the 19th century.
Liberty had forged his taste at Farmer & Rogers’s Shawl and Cloak Emporium (o dream concept!), managing its Oriental Warehouse, which bought up much of the exotic debris from the London International Exhibition of 1862. Here he brushed shoulders with tastemakers such as William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones.
In 1875, after ten years at the helm, Arthur L.L. asked to be made partner and was refused. He opened a rival store across the street, and the rest is lavishly-patterned history. Not only were Liberty’s Japanese wares still all the rage following the Treaty of Edo in 1858, the Aesthetic Movement that flourished between the 1860s and 1890s made the store its mecca. The divine Oscar himself billed it: “The chosen resort of the artistic shopper”.
As art for art’s sake began to pall, Liberty’s contained and commodified decadence came to sate both Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts mania, until what became known as the “Liberty Style” itself became coveted.
By the century’s turn, Liberty boasted over a hundred employees and branches in Paris and Birmingham (even in my Eighties yoof, Brum’s pre-Raphaelite vibe was pronounced). Meanwhile, its agents busied themselves all over Europe, North America, Australia, Japan and China.
Since then, Liberty’s fashion collaborators have been legion. These include: Paul Poiret, Jean Muir, Mary Quant, Givenchy, Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Cacharel, Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, Chloé, Marc Jacobs, Hermès, Gucci, Levi’s, Dr Martens and Harris Tweed.
And, now, a century and a half on from A.L.L’s industrious orientalism, Liberty is celebrating its 150th birthday.
I have my own anniversary forged out of Liberty Lawn cotton this summer. For my mother died ten years ago in June. She and I had many differences — not least the decade in which she refused to have any contact.
However, we also enjoyed certain shared loves: scent, old stuff, kleptomaniac tendencies around china. Liberty was another, a language we shared.
In the 1980s, our only local purveyor merely sold the company’s handkerchiefs and knick-knackery, despite our occupying Arts and Crafts-ville Moseley. When my mother went on a jolly, our pockets would become stuffed with Tana Lawn — if not the 45,000 patterns now in its archive, then swathes of Mitsi, Susanna and Queen Hera.
These were the most exquisite objects she could afford, their purple packaging richer than that of nearby Cadbury. On my eighteenth birthday, she presented me with a cornucopia of Victorian and Edwardian treasures, a Burnham-print wallet, miniature picture frame and glasses case. The latter is by my side as I write, faded yet magnificent. Wait, I’m crying.
My mother never visited me in London. It was too far a mental leap. And it pains me that she never saw her spiritual home. I wish she could accompany me to admire The Patchwork Collective, that vast global project of over 1,000 handcrafted squares woven into a quilted house and exhibited in-store until 24 July, before joining the archive.
In terms of presenting her with anniversary bling, not being a Grayson Perry fan, I would have avoided his prints in favour of the Fifties-inspired Carline Blur Wool-Silk Scarf (£275) I acquired for myself. I have the cream, cerise and grass-green blooms yet still hanker after the navy, emerald and robin’s egg.
Maternal relics apart, my most cherished Liberty objects are what my creative heroines have concocted with its wares. There is the portrait of my whippet, Pim, by Eleri Larkum of Rocket Full of Pie fame (from £160, rocketfullofpie.com). Behold, a “thread sketch” or “free-motion machine” embroidery achieved with a Sixties Singer, Tana Lawn backdrops and genius-level ingenuity.
Or I give you milliner Victoria Grant’s Liberty Love Letter Collection (from £420, victoriagrant.com): an array of titfers, toppers and plumed and nose-ringed gimp masks, resplendent in flora and fauna.
Like my mother, when I require solace, I too seek out Liberty. You will find me in the haberdashery department, sourcing buttons to raise my garments’ game, spooling out Burnham ribbon to tie up all my woes.
