Silk Shop Edinburgh: post WW2

In the years after WW2, Silk Shop Edinburgh began to flourish, and repeatedly outgrew the shop premises, despite a number of expansion projects in the 1950s.  The shop benefitted hugely from the arrival in 1947 of the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, a highly successful month long festival held in August, that brought more tourists and shoppers.  In 1953, following the acquisition of Bainbridges into the John Lewis Partnership, the Edinburgh and Newcastle Silk Shops were subsequently directed from Bainbridges.

By the 1960s, the Silk Shop had become an Edinburgh institution, often with queues outside, especially on a Saturday when it closed at 1pm. Space came at a premium, and the store worked hard to maximise usage of space, whilst displaying products to their full potential.

An extension of the premises in 1962, that saw a 48.4% increase in selling space, was swallowed up by customer demand by the late 1960s.  The partnership announced that a new department store was to be built in the St James Centre, Edinburgh. This sounded the end of the Silk Shop, as the new department store was opened as John Lewis Edinburgh.