TheOrator.Press Events Page. ‘Events Dear Boy. Events.’ The First Morley’s Department Store Fashion Show Since It Opened It’s Doors To The Public Over 150 Years Ago. Based In The Heart of Continuously Changing Brixton, Morley’s Insist This Stylish Development Has Nothing To Do With Gentrification. Nor That It’s About Fast Fashion. But Some May Still Need Convincing. October 2023

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A Black History Month Special

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Our First Ever Business Interview For Our First Ever Edition (September 2020) Was With Architect Michael Squire, The Owner And Founder of Brixton’s New Private Members Club ‘Upstairs At The Department Store.’ One of The Things That Stayed With Us From That Interview Was His Willingness To Accept The Fact That Gentrification Is A Real Phenomenon And That It Was Important To Him To Respect The Community In Which In Was Happening. Especially If A Business Organisation Was Part of It, Which He Accepted His Was. Hence He And His Company ‘Squire’s The Architects’ (Who Are Based In The Same Building As The New Rooftop Private Members Club, On The Site of The Former Bon Marche Department Store Building, Just A Short Distance From Morley’s) Made Several Outreach Efforts In The Community, Especially During The Pandemic.

In Comparison, On Speaking With The Morley’s Management, During Morley’s Inaugural The Fashion Show They Denied It Had Anything To Do With Gentrification But Insisted Instead That It Was Simply Part of A Long Standing Plan of Store Refurbishment And Re-development That Was Long In The Making.

Meanwhile Other Long-Standing Businesses Are Closing Down. In Particular Just Across The Street, Virtually Opposite. They Operated Along Side Brixton Market, From The Famous Brixton Arches, Located Under The Brixton Railway Station, In Brixton’s Electric Avenue (So Named Because It Was The First Street Market To Be Lit By Electric Lighting – Having Been Built Eight Years After Morley’s In 1888 – Following The Store’s Opening In 1880). Thriving Back In The Day (In The Midst of Industrialisation).

Tragically They Are Now Unable To Sustain Their Fight Against Big Corporations And Their Big Commercial Operations Which Involve Rent Hikes That These Smaller Businesses Simply Can’t Survive. They Believe That They Are In Effect, Being Pushed Out As The Council And Corporations Cater To Brixton’s New Middle-Class Who Are Buying Property In The Area. (Such A Class of People, In Any Area During The Age of Industrialisation Were Known As ‘The Landed Gentry’. Hence The Term Gentrification).

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