Vera Weisfeld and her second husband, Gerald, established the ‘What Every Woman Wants’ retail chain in the 1970s and developed it into an icon of the British High Street.
Suddenly, the latest trends were within the reach of ordinary girls and women, with Gerald deploying his unique buying skills on the London markets and Vera casting her retail genius across an ever-growing list of stores.
Billy Connolly opened a branch on Argyle Street in Glasgow – gloriously sitting atop a horse and cart – and TV adverts blasted out to the music of ‘Whatever You Want’ by Status Quo.
At the height of its success, more than 30 years ago, in 1990, the couple sold the business for £50 million.
A spokesperson for her family said: ”Vera died peacefully, with her family around her, on Thursday night.”
Vera Carlin was born on February 10 1938 in her family’s basement flat in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, which boasted neither electricity nor an inside toilet. Her beloved father, Terry, climbed telegraph poles for the Post Office.
Despite later affording to stay in some of the world’s finest mansions, Vera was adamant that no property could ever outshine the warm memory of the tiny single end flat at 29 Coats Street in Coatbridge.
Her retail experience began at C&A on Glasgow’s Argyle Street, rising from a 15-year-old junior to head of the branch’s ‘Marking Off’ room within a year.
She had a photographic memory for the length of time garments had been in stock, what the buying price was, what the selling price was, the colour and the size. The meticulous C&A system was one which she would take with her when she eventually set up ‘What Every’s’ with Gerald Weisfeld two decades later, in 1971.
Famously, she walked out of her interview with the London rag trade executive when he tried to hire her to run the first store, again on Glasgow’s Argyle Street. ‘You can’t afford me’ she blithely told him before he begged her to stay.
Together, they would go on to create a Colossus of the High Street, a fashion emporium within the earnings of ordinary people.
They sold the business for £50 million, in 1990, throwing a lavish hotel party for staff and Scottish celebrities.
However, though the Weisfelds enjoyed their wealth, they spent almost as much time giving it away as they did amassing it. Through their charity The Weisfeld Foundation, they donated millions of pounds to good causes, particularly those benefitting children.
In 1994, they travelled to Bosnia to oversee the distribution of aid to refugees from the Balkans War, despite a Foreign Office warning against all travel. They established homes for children with HIV infection in Romania, who had been shunned by their own families.
There was time for fun, too. Almost 20 years ago, Vera reunited with five friends from the St Patrick’s Primary School in Coatbridge they had started together in 1942, whisking them off on a £100,000 all-expenses-paid trip to the Big Apple and the 5-star New York Palace Hotel.
Gerald died five years ago, aged 79.