One of the oldest British brands that is still going strong more than a century after it was born is Dorothy Perkins.
The Dorothy Perkins brand is today owned by the Arcadia group and is amongst the most wide spread and successful brands in England and has more than a hundred stores all over the United Kingdom. But in over a century of existence, the brand has seen a whole lot of ups and downs and it has weathered many a storm and out lived and out lasted many of its competitors. Even the ones that many people thought were much trendier than the staid and behind the time Perkins label mostly fell by the way side while this label soldiered on first into the twenty first century and the new millennium without showing any signs of slowing down or seeming dated.
The label was first started at the beginning of the last century of the last millennium in nineteen hundred and nine and at that time it did not even have the same name. It was started under the name H P Newman and it was not until almost a decade later that it changed its name to the one that it still has now. It was in nineteen hundred and nineteen that the H P Newman brand changed its name to Dorothy Perkins and started selling products and doing business under this new moniker.
Half a century later the company had changed ownership and was now the property of the Farndon family whose patriarch Alan Farndon was held by many to be responsible for the staid image at the time of the brand and the fashions and styles of clothes and accessories like undergarments that it was selling at the time that were distinctly unfashionable and behind the times.
Somehow though, the brand got up to speed and lasted throughout the sixties and was able to stay afloat while many of its competitors seemed to run out of steam. It was taken over by the British Land group in the next decade and in nineteen hundred and seventy three, the director of the British Land group David Roxburgh took over the stewardship of the company. Today it is owned by the Arcadia group that has thoroughly modernised both the company as well as the products that the Perkins brand sells and today it is one of the most successful brands that the British fashion industry has ever had in over a hundred years of its history.
