SHOP TALK

Department Stores, Shoppers and Consumer Capitalism, 1945-2025

This Australian Research Council funded Discovery Project is with Robert Crawford and Matt Bailey.

It aims to provide a deeper understanding of shopping and its significance in everyday Australian life by using oral history interviews with shoppers, workers and managers who have engaged with department stores since 1945. This project expects to produce the first history of the country’s post-war department stores. Expected outcomes include new, more nuanced perspectives of shopping and the challenges affecting the retail sector via a range of publications, international collaborations, and an archive of oral history recordings. This should provide significant benefits to researchers examining the retail sector, to Australians working in retail, and to ordinary Australians, whose stories will be placed on the historical record.
For more information and to contribute your memories of departments stores see the project website

THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF AUSTRALIAN FEMALE DEPARTMENT STORE BUYERS

Zoe Rundle was one of a surprising number of Australian female department store buyers who travelled the world in the twentieth century. With my colleague, historian Matthew Bailey, I am writing a book about these intrepid women, who dictated fashion and more to Australian customers for much of the twentieth century.

DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ONE OF THESE WOMEN? Were you or your mother, grandmother, aunt, sister or friend, a department store buyer? Please get in touch using the contact form.