There was a Bluesky meme the other day asking you to post a song from the year you turned 12. I chose this one – Ian Hunter sings David Bowie.
Early on in it comes the lyric:
"And Wendy's stealing clothes from Marks and Sparks."
When I was young, Marks and Sparks was both an affectionate nickname for Marks & Spencer and the abbreviation that everyone used. Today, everyone follows the company's own branding and calls them M&S.
I wondered when the change took place. The earliest use of Marks and Sparks I could find in the British Newspaper Archive is more recent than I expected: it dates from 1957.
Marks & Spencer dropped St Michael from its clothing labels in favour of M&S in 2000, and my feeling is that M&S was being pushed for some time before that.
I do remember using "Marks and Sparks" when I worked at Golden Wonder, which dates it to 1988 at the latest, and it had a retro feel to me even then.
Although “Sparks” is the name of the loyalty points M&S offers, which is a nice nod to the past. There has been a weird tendency of established companies to reject their interesting names and adopt bald uninteresting initials. Perhaps HSBC and GKN are the worst examples.
ReplyDeleteA good excuse to treat yourself to Eric Partridge's dictionary of slang?
ReplyDeleteAh, but when did they drop 'St Margaret' for female underwear?
ReplyDelete