Schleppers and Shoppers: Jews, Street Markets, and the Selling of Ready-to-Ware Fashion in London in the 1920′s and 1930′s

Thursday, September 27, 5:00 p.m.
Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery
Annual Robert K. Webb History Department Lecture
“Schleppers and Shoppers: Jews, Street Markets, and the Selling of Ready-to-Ware Fashion in London in the 1920′s and 1930′s”
Judith Walkowitz, Johns Hopkins University

“Schleppers and Shoppers” spotlights a Jewish street market that emerged as the cutting edge retail space for mass market fashion in the West End. Whereas journalists described the smartly-dressed, fast-talking shop assistants locally known as  “schleppers,” and the working-class female patrons they pulled into gown shops as straying from the class codes and styles of established English culture, Jewish Sohoites told hilarious tales of the “schlepper” as a Jewish street character, alternately resembling a red hot mama and a flashily dressed fellow emulating the dress of celluloid gangsters. Their memories recall a safe and modern space of ethnic settlement, simultaneously tied to Soho’s irregular world of sex, crime, and entertainment.