Gordon Selfridge’s father survived the carnage of the American Civil War but never returned home to his family in Michigan, forcing his wife to take up teaching to keep the family.

As an ambitious 20-year-old Gordon joined the Chicago department store Marshall Field and after 25 years became a partner, made a fortune and married well. He was a good salesman but an even better promoter and is credited with those irritating retailing slogans: “The customer is always right” and “Only X shopping days to Christmas.”

Nearing 50 with a wife and four children, he could have retired wealthy and respected, but instead decided to open his own store in London, a city he had visited in 1906. At the time he had been unimpressed by its old-fashioned shops.

Selfridge had the priceless gift of knowing when times were changing, and profiting by it. Women of all classes were more independent, earning their own money and eager to spend it, and he meant them to spend it in Selfridges. Shopping had previously been mainly for necessities but this was to be shopping for pleasure, and in pleasurable surroundings.

The new store in Oxford Street, two years in the building and costing £400,000 (approx £33 million today), proclaimed itself ‘Open to the World’ in March 1909.

Selfridge tantalised both press and public by keeping them guessing what was being created behind the 21 shrouded plate glass windows.

The latest fashions

A bugle call signalled the moment for the curtains to sweep up and reveal the latest fashions set in an enchanted landscape à la Fragonard and Watteau. London had never seen anything like it and by closing time the last of 90,000 customers reluctantly went home.

Gone were the dark mahogany cabinets and hushed interior of so many stores: bright showrooms, wide aisles, lofty ceilings and open vistas subtly drew customers from one department to the next. The interior was bright and spacious and the range of goods immense. There were restaurants, a writing room, a library and first aid centre.

After witnessing Blériot’s triumph, Selfridge did a deal with the aviator to exhibit the monoplane in the store. Over four days 12,000 people poured in to view the battered aircraft – so great was the crowd that one day the doors didn’t close until midnight.

In the 1920s he persuaded champion Suzanne Lenglen to give tennis lessons on the roof. Some of the spectators were shocked at her risqué calf-length dress, designed by Paris couturier Jean Patou, but happily bought replicas of her famous white bandeau.

Rosalie Selfridge died in the 1918 influenza pandemic and her husband never remarried. He had always lived grandly and entertained extravagantly and his name was soon scandalously linked with Rosika and Jansci Deutsch. These Hungarian twins made their name with the Ziegfield Follies before touring Europe where their gambling became legendary.

The besotted Selfridge bestowed vast sums and lavish jewellery on them, to the unending delight of the tabloid press. Sadly he died alone in 1947 in relative obscurity and actual poverty.