Apple Boutique
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Apple shop was a retail store that opened on 7 December 1967 located in a now demolished building on the corner of Baker Street and Paddington Street, Marylebone, London, and that closed on 30 June 1968. The shop was one of the first business ventures made by The Beatles' fledgling Apple Corps.
The concept of the shop was that everything in it was for sale. The aim, as described by Paul McCartney, was to create 'a beautiful place where beautiful people can buy beautiful things'. In practice the stock was overwhelmingly fashion garments and accessories. John Lennon vetoed the use of the word ‘boutique’ but the venture has come to be popularly referred to as the “Apple Boutique”.
The Dutch designers, Simon Posthuma and Marijke Koeger had met Simon Hayes and Barry Finch in London and formed the The Fool, design collective. Pattie Harrison was familiar with them and introduced them to The Beatles who, in September 1967, gave The Fool £100,000 to design and stock the first outlet of a planned national chain of “Apple” shops. The Beatles business took a lease on 94 Baker Street, a Georgian town house dating from 1795, and the ground floor was proposed for the Apple shop despite the location being remote from the centres of fashion and design of 1960’s London.
Barry Finch employed art students to paint a psychedelic style mural, designed by The Fool, across the building's facades between 10 and 12 November 1967. The concept was borrowed from the painting of the facades of the Lord John shop in Carnaby Street, albeit executed to a figurative design with greater density and colour. Westminster City Council had not granted consent for this, which could be construed as an advertisement, nor had a licence to do this been sought from the landlord, the Portman Estate.
The launch party on 5 December 1967 was attended by John Lennon and George Harrison with their wives, sipping apple juice as the shop had no alcohol licence. Invitations read 'Come at 7.46. Fashion Show at 8.16.' suggesting a degree of precision and planning not subsequently realised in the management of the business.
John Lennon’s friend Peter Shotton managed the store with Pattie Harrison's sister Jenny Boyd. The Apple shop was a financial disaster. Theft was endemic . Customers helped themselves to the stock as did staff members who had difficulty in determining which things people had come in with and those which they had picked up in the shop. The ethos of the venture and those operating it was antipathetic to making accusations of shop lifting or of calling for the police. The Fool's members also made a habit of taking their choice of the merchandise.
Complaints to Westminster City Council from local traders resulted in the Council issuing Apple with an enforcement notice to paint over the façade mural. In addition, the Portman Estate were prevailed upon to enforce the terms of the lease. Between 15 and 18 May 1968 the facades were duly painted white with the word “Apple” in cursive script painted on each fascia. This transformation and shift in style from the florid ‘psychedelia’ of the original mural, already anachronistic by the end of 1967, to the minimalism of the ‘approved’ scheme prefigures the contrast in record cover design between that of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band released in June 1967 and that of The Beatles (album) to be released in November 1968.
The retail business lost money at an alarming rate, eventually running to £200 000 and the shop was closed on 30 July 1968. The Beatles, their wives and girlfriends came the night before, to take what they wanted. The next morning it was announced that all the remaining stock was to be given away on the basis of one item per person. Word spread quickly and the shop was empty within hours. The public, numbering in the hundreds nearly rioted trying to get their share and the police attended.
As a final ill judged gesture at the end of August 1968, Paul McCartney used the windows of the closed shop to advertise the Beatles first Apple Records single release, scraping "Hey Jude" in the whitewash on the glass. This was mis-construed as anti-Semitic graffiti, 'Jude' being German for 'Jew' and the graffiti was removed.
Peter Shotton, moved on to other jobs at Apple Corps. Jenny Boyd, dated singer Donovan, and later married drummer Mick Fleetwood.
The eighteenth century house was demolished in 1974 and replaced with Travelscene House, 94 Baker Street, London W1U 6FZ. This is an office building, taller than the eighteenth century house, with incorrectly proportioned neo-Georgian facades that pastiche the main facade of the original building, and forming part of a controversial redevelopment of the historic urban block to north and east.
On 31 July 2008, a recreation of the "Apple Boutique" mural was projected onto the building by BBC programme Newsnight to mark the 40th anniversary of the shop's closure. This was part of Newsnight's series marking the 40th anniversary of 1968 and brought together Pattie Boyd, Beatles' friend Tony Bramwell, and 'sixties actress, and later fashion designer, Edina Ronay to recall the controversial and eccentric Apple Boutique.
[edit] References
- The Beatles London, by Piet Schreuders, Mark Lewison, Adam Smith (Portico Books, 2008)
- Apple to the Core; the Unmaking of the Beatles, by Peter McCabe and Robert Schonfeld (Pocket Books, 1972)
- Shout!, by Philip Norman (Warner Books, 1982)
- The Beatles, by Hunter Davies (authorized biography)
[edit] External links
- Apple Boutique page at strawberrywalrus.com - includes contemporary photographs
