Mary Portas Queen of Frocks- turning a department store into a sex shop?

Purple dildos and ‘Armoury’tights worn on the arms, were just some of Mary’s ideas for her new store at House of Fraser.

On last night’s episode of Queen of Frocks, the retail guru told House of Fraser bods that she wanted the design of her retail space to be fun and sexy with neon pictures of naked silhouettes of women and an area selling sex toys.

‘This is a family store’, the managers told her. ‘I don’t want to have to explain to my seven-year-old what a dildo is’, said another.

So the dildo’s were replaced with a line of homeware, a comparable compromise?

Things got worse as a month to go until the launch, and Mary’s collection was slated by her group of forty something women and a focus group set up by her business manager to decide whether Mary should be the face of the advertising campaign, after the retail consultant refused to do it, not wanting a celebrity endorsed line, like she said ‘Linda Barker with DFS.’The focus group, who agreed that Mary’s face shouldn’t be used to advertise the brand, said her clothes were boring and not quirky like the way she dresses.

However, Mary’s harshest critic was forty something Penn, who told her that her suit (part of collection) made her (Penn) look like a McDonalds manager, her sheer shirt was something she would have worn in the eighties, and a tight-fitting dress, which the other women said looked lovely on her, she claimed covered up her body which was better than the dress.

Taking on their feedback, Ms Portas extended her collection with clothes that she would wear, wasn’t that an obvious move, adding a leopard print shift dress and leather panelled dress. She also came up with, what she considered to be a genius idea to banish bingo wings and replace the shrug, ‘Armoury’, tights worn as sleeves, which Daily mail journalist Liz Jones scoffed at.

And that wasn’t Mary’s only problem, her only make member of staff Mark failed to respond to messages about a training day, leaving Mary to chase him herself, and then missing his train to go and view Mary’s shoe collection in collaboration with Clarks, along with the rest of the team. He turned up an hour late and missed the training. Mary warned Mark, who has been unemployed for a year, she was taking a risk with him.

On next week’s episode Mary’s store opens to the public.