Bernard Lewis, the Jewish fashion tycoon and founder of River Island, has died aged 100.
Lewis, who passed away surrounded by his family on Saturday, just weeks after his 100th birthday, had an 80-year-long career in the retail industry, launching his first clothing business from a small self-built wooden shack in London in 1946 after several years owning a greengrocer's in Holloway, North London.
Born in 1926, he was the son of Jewish-Ukrainian immigrant Louis Pakrasse, who anglicised his surname to Lewis.
Bernard studied at JFS in the late 1930s and early 1940s, before serving in the RAF during the Second World War.
In 1946, having left the air force, he set up a fruit stall in a bomb site on Holloway Road with his brothers, David, Geoffrey and Godfrey.
Two years after opening the fruit stall, the brothers started selling knitting yarns and quickly moved towards selling women's blouses and skirts as separates.
Lewis Separates was launched in 1948 on Mare Street in Hackney and, within seven years, had expanded to nine shops.
Lewis had already begun designing his own clothes by that time, with the help of a female fashion designer, and made two trips a year to Hong Kong to find design ideas that none of his rival stores had.
By the mid-1960s, Lewis Separates had established around 70 shops and expanded out of London into cities such as Brighton, Hull and even Glasgow.
Godfrey and Geoffrey left the family business after a family disagreement in the 1970s, but it was around this time that Lewis’ sons, Leonard and Clive, joined.
The Lewis Separates brand was renamed to Chelsea Girl, before being rebranded again to River Island in 1988.
In 2005, fashion magazine Drapers presented Lewis, then 79 and still frequently going into his office to work, with a lifetime achievement award.
However, Lewis largely stayed out of the spotlight throughout his career and was strictly private about his personal life.
In 1951, he married Lorna Spencer, and the couple had three children before their marriage was dissolved in 1968.
He then married model and actress Jennifer Oldham later that year, and they remained together until her death in 1975.
Six years later, he married Vanessa Bracey, a Chelsea Girl buyer, with whom he had two sons.
While he did not often discuss his Judaism, his family’s charitable trust raised £163,325 for Jewish community support.
River Island was also the target of a boycott campaign in 2024 by anti-Israel activists due to the family’s support for the Jewish state.
In a rare interview with Drapers, Lewis said: “It’s difficult now for people to realise how hot we were once we found our successful formula in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
“We were growing so fast, there was a rumour we had won the football pools! We deliberately stayed an unlimited liability company until the mid-1960s.
“People didn’t know how good we were, but we did and we had no intention of telling them how we did it. We were the only game in town.”
River Island, now run by Bernard’s nephew, Ben Lewis, has expanded to have 300 stores worldwide and is valued at over £1 billion.
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