Derek Rose

Derek Rose (Class of 1949) celebrated his 92nd birthday in September by taking up his right as a Freeman and Guild Member of the City of London, to drive sheep across Southwark Bridge (scroll down for photos!) Derek has spent his life in the family menswear business that, since the 1970s, has borne his name. Derek Rose Ltd supplies pyjamas and leisurewear to major stores around the world, including Harrods and Selfridges and also has three of its own shops in London, one with a partner in Dubai and another opening shortly in Saudi Arabia.

What were the origins of the family business?

My father started the company in 1926. It was called Bonsoir. His parents had come over from eastern Europe and he was born in England in 1900. He started the company with a fellow he’d met working at a shirt-making factory. They started making pyjamas in a small factory at Turnmill Street in the City, just off Farringdon Road.

The pyjama at that time was virtually unknown. Men wore night-shirts. The pyjama was an Indian garment that officers had brought back from India – but in India, the pyjama is only the trousers. My father and his partner matched up the trousers with the jacket and made it pyjamas as we now know them…

They invented the pyjamas as we now know them?

Basically, yes! In 1926. And he carried on with the business until 1966.

I was born in 1932 – in Margate, because my parents were on holiday there when the time came. I remember the outbreak of War. I was seven or eight. My father had a new factory in Stoke Newington then – a nice, ultra-modern even by today’s standards, three-storey factory. So he stayed in London to look after his factory which was making uniforms for the forces. We children were shipped out of London. We were shunted about all over the place. I was at several different schools – in Chard, Somerset and then in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, to name just two – but we ended up coming back to Hampstead Garden Suburb as the bombing was more rare and eventually was replaced by the V1 and V2, the new rockets. After the bombing raids, we used to spend our time collecting shrapnel and the strips of silver paper that the British planes had dropped on London to confuse the Nazi planes, along with the flare-heads that the Nazi planes had dropped to light up the City, making it easier to hit their target. London, otherwise, was pitch black at night. I had a little collection of all this stuff on display in my bedroom.

I remember the start of the Blitz when the German bombers came up the Thames and bombed the docks. I remember looking out from my sister’s room and seeing the sky all around us was red, from the fires in the docks.

Later in the War, we heard bombs and missiles coming much closer to us. One night, an incendiary bomb came through the skylight of our garage and burned out my father’s little Hillman Minx Convertible.

How did you come to be at CLS?

My father just said one day that I was going for a test at City of London School. I don’t know how I did but I managed to pass the exam and [1] I got an interview with the headmaster. He was a very nice guy. Mr F.R. Dale, MC. He’d won the Military Cross in the First World War. He was very nice. I had a stammer and had trouble pronouncing my name. So, when Mr Dale asked me what my name was, I wished the floor would open up and swallow me.

My father helped me out and Mr Dale started asking me what I liked and what interested me – I said, ‘Well, everything, really.’ And he said I would go on the Classical side. I had no idea what that was. But the school was divided into three: the Modern side – where you did French and German, the Classical side – where I did Ancient Greek and Latin – and the Science side.

I started when I was 12, coming up 13, in the autumn of 1945. My form-master was ‘Boggy’ Marsh. He’d been in the Air Force. Decent fellow. I actually liked all the masters. They were all very nice. Most of them had been in the services except for the older ones who had been evacuated with the School to Marlborough during the War.

Can you remember your first week at school?

I went on the tram – it was the last period of the tram running along the Embankment. I went to school on the Underground from East Finchley to Blackfriars, then took the tram for the last part of the journey. I had never been on a tram before so after school I decided to take the tram to Charing Cross. Talk about ‘Shake, rattle and roll’! It was quite an experience. By the end of that term, I think, that tram service had finished and they were digging up the road to take out the rails they ran on.

Did you enjoy your time at school?

Yes. I liked the masters; I enjoyed the whole thing. Once, amazingly, I won a prize for maths. It was presented to me by the Lord Mayor who used to come on prize day [and still does! – Ed]. This was 1949, my last year.[2]

You were the best in the year at Maths?

Oh no, the prize was only for my set, I wasn’t that wonderful! Don’t ask me what the prize was for. It was the only thing I actually won at school.

What extra-curricular activities did you enjoy?

The[3]  C.C.F. (The Combined Cadet Force) was compulsory. I opted for the Army section. The teacher in charge was a very nice guy, Colonel Vokins. The boys called him ‘BIF’ because they were his initials. In about the second week, he said the 12 of us, who were new boys, were going to go down to the old air raid shelter under the school, which you accessed by some stairs on the riverbank. This shelter had been converted into a shooting range. They gave us rifles and a few do’s and dont’s and then we lay down to aim at the targets, 20 feet away. I fired and my shot hit the wire holding everything together and all the targets just fell down! BIF was a bit annoyed, but they fixed it all up again and we had another shot. And this time my bullet ricocheted onto the light and we were plunged into darkness. BIF called me out and said “Rose, get your eyes tested tomorrow”. And I’ve been wearing glasses ever since! I did shoot again after that and I became quite proficient at shooting, once I had my glasses…

Did you play sport?

Not that much. We had to take transport to Charing Cross and then the train to Grove Park. In those days it all took a long time. You spent so much time going there and getting back in a Wednesday afternoon. I’d be lucky if I got back in time for dinner. It took forever. So, I didn’t do much sport. I played a bit of rugby there – I learned the safest place to play was in the back row. I didn’t play cricket at the time, although I went on to love it. I played a bit of tennis with a fellow from India – I think at that time he was the only Indian in the school. That wasn’t at Grove Park but in Regents Park.

Back at the school, where we had our own Fives courts, I played Fives and enjoyed it.

What was life like as a teenager, straight after the War?

I was friendly with most of the other boys in the class. We would visit each other at home.

I used to go to a shop in High Holborn that sold magic tricks – I spent hours down there. They’d demonstrate the tricks, make handkerchiefs disappear, all that sort of thing. I used to do magic shows for my family.

But the greatest fun I had was going to see the BBC radio comedy shows being recorded – they made them at the Paris Cinema on Lower Regent Street. Much Binding in the Marsh with Richard ‘Stinker’ Murdoch. The ITMA shows – It’s that Man Again – with Tommy Handley. We would get there about four o’clock, after school, and queue up outside. We were always very early. It was all free. It was the most exciting thing that we did. I would go with my school-friend Maurice Gross, who went on to become a surgeon. We’re still friends now, 80 years later!

Did you always know you would go into the family business?

I didn’t know what I was going to do. I don’t think any of the other guys had thought what to do after school. Certainly, no-one spoke about it, not the way they do now. Then, one day, my father just told me, ‘You’re going to go to Manchester and to the Royal  Technical College in Salford’.

My father went to Manchester every week buying cloth and he had someone working for him up there and that guy – lovely guy – had found this course at the Royal Technical College, which was about the technical aspect of the industry – the making and designing of fabric and so on. I enjoyed it enormously.

I realised that this was what I wanted to do. I learned much more there than I had learned at school because I enjoyed it so much. I did chemistry. I did design. All the different subjects that played a part in the business. I spent four years up there. I started off in digs, didn’t like it, then lived in a private hotel in south Manchester for my last couple of years. I made a lot of friends up there.

You seem to have a natural enthusiasm for things and to enjoy life… is that your outlook?

You’re 110 per cent right! I tell people if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing for a living, get out and find something you do enjoy. If you go home and say, ‘Thank God another day is finished’, you’re wasting your life. I’ve always enjoyed my life. I’ve been very lucky. I’ve enjoyed it all the way through.

I loved working in the industry. I worked on every side of it. I learned about the cutting, the packing, the returns. I learned the whole business, top to bottom.

My real love was working on export. I built the exports up to 65 per cent of the company. In 1966, my father sold the Bonsoir and I stayed on as managing director but the company to which he had sold Bonsoir, was one of thirty companies in the group that went into liquidation. I left and started my own business with my brother in-law and called it ‘Derek Rose Pyjamas’.That is still thriving today and run by my son.We got the exports up to 65 per cent of business in that new company too. I won the Queen’s Award for Export twice.

What did you enjoy about the process of exporting ?

When I was studying at Salford, 85 per cent of the class were foreigners and I got on so well with them that I realised that dealing with different people in the future was going to be my forte. I always told my agents: ‘Make friends with the customers you are going to sell to – and then you’re halfway towards selling your merchandise’. My father was like that. He made friends with the buyers of Bentall’s and Selfridges in his early days. Other buyers he couldn’t make friends with – but I ended up getting on with them and selling to them! I don’t know what the difference between me and my father was, but I carried on selling to them until they retired.

Going abroad to build exports, I was making friends with customers all over the world. In Japan, Australia, Mexico, Sweden, just to name but a few. I’d be invited for lunch in Milan and dinner in Cannes. Everyone was so nice and friendly. I made friends with all the customers and local agents and most of them are still my friends now.

What advice would you give to a 16-year-old, based on your career?

Have a positive attitude. Enjoying what you are doing is so important in life; being honest and straightforward and friendly – and respecting other people, especially people older than oneself.

What has been the favourite item of clothing you’ve ever owned? 

Just one?! I’ll tell you. Many years ago I had a baby lamb sheepskin coat which was as light as a feather but unbelievably warm. It came from Bulgaria. I got it through a friend who was the accountant for the importer. This was the 1950s. It didn’t last long. The Bulgarians banned the killing of baby lambs for coats – quite rightly, too. I fully accepted that. But it was an amazing coat. There’s never been another.

Derek drives the sheep across Southwark Bridge

Derek, second row- fourth from the right