David Jones has lived through a lot. It has survived two world wars, the Great Depression, modern recessions and changing tastes. But lately, it feels like death by a thousand cuts for the department store, whose future beyond Christmas is in question. Not that other department stores around the globe are immune – but for Australians, this one feels especially raw.
There have been so many points of pride in its 188-year history. On that point alone, David Jones remains the world’s oldest continuously operating department store still trading under its original name. Not London’s Selfridges, not New York’s Saks Fifth Avenue – but our own DJs (as it is affectionately known).
While originally a Sydney mainstay, from the 1950s it started buying up local department stores in other states to become a national retailer. In 2016 it even opened its first international store, in Wellington, New Zealand.
More than any other location, its Elizabeth Street store, opened in 1927, is an institution. Televisions were installed for customers to watch the moon landing in 1969 and there were annual traditions including spring flower displays and whimsical Christmas windows that drew children out well past their bedtimes. Even Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II walked its floors and a state dinner was held at the Great Restaurant in 1954. It was the chicest of shopping experiences, one that drew people “into town” from the suburbs, until branches in closer proximity opened in those suburbs.
Generations of Australians have shopped from its departments, for everything from Butterick dressmaking patterns (vale the haberdashery department), to alien Alessi juicers from wedding registry lists or new doonas for the winter months. It also held rites of passage: teenage girls were taken by their mothers to be fitted for their first bra by matronly expert fitters; teenage boys were dragged in for their first suit. Mothers and daughters would once finish their shopping with lunch or coffee at the cafeteria; weekend shopping trips with girlfriends might end up at the champagne bar in the food hall.
And no Australian can look at the black-and-white houndstooth check without thinking “David Jones”. Since the 1960s, that pattern has been synonymous with the brand, covering shopping bags, credit cards, and even Megan Gale closing its autumn/winter 2007 parade in a custom Alex Perry.
Even in its earliest days, David Jones offered garments, fabrics and accoutrements in line with British and French styles of the day. But after the second world war, its fashion credentials became impeccable thanks to a tenacious buyer setting up direct lines to Paris haute couture houses. Pierre Balmain even visited the Sydney store in 1947, bringing his latest catwalk designs. The retailer set up exclusive agreements with French houses to manufacture line-for-line recreations of original designs from the likes of Yves Saint Laurent, Dior and more, making them not only available but affordable to Australian women.
Sales assistants of this era were impeccably turned out–and abundant on the shop floor. Although a work of fiction, Madeleine St John’s novel The Women in Black (and subsequent film and TV series) is widely believed to be based on David Jones.
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That focus on fashion would ultimately benefit local designers, including the likes of Carla Zampatti, Akira Isogawa, Collette Dinnigan and Zimmermann. As a newspaper fashion writer from the late-2000s, I can report that the biggest news stories were built around the so-called store wars being played out between David Jones and rival Myer to sign the most coveted Australian designers to their stables. When Toni Maticevski returned to David Jones in 2019 after headlining at Myer for 15 years, it was the sartorial equivalent of a mic drop. Certainly it marked the fork in the road where DJs pursued the luxury route and Myer the mass market.
The onslaught of online shopping (to which David Jones was a latecomer), the rise of fast (and ultra-fast) fashion, a global pandemic, rising costs and cost of living means every retailer now has to work harder and smarter. But every great city deserves a centrepiece department store; and Australian cities wouldn’t seem complete without one David Jones store at their hearts.
