Dorothy Perkins
multinational women’s fashion retailer based in the United Kingdom
Dorothy Perkins is a British online women's fashion retailer operated by Debenhams Group in the United Kingdom. Formerly a store chain, it sold both its own range of clothes and branded fashion goods until February 2021, when it became part of Boohoo Group (now known as Debenhams Group), having been acquired after the collapse of Philip Green's fashion empire Arcadia Group.
History
Founded in 1909 under the name H. P. Newman, the company changed its trading name to Dorothy Perkins in 1919. In the 1960s, Dorothy Perkins was controlled by the Farmer family, who used to own Winster Hosiery. Staff in the branches could expect regular visits from Alan Farmer, whose picture was printed in a booklet handed to new employees. He established Dorothy Perkins by offering low prices for women's clothing. Best known for its lingerie, tights, and sleepwear collections, its other clothes had difficulty competing with the more trendy Lewis Separates, now owned by River Island Clothing Company Ltd, and Peter Robinson.
In the late 1960s, Dorothy Perkins co-funded Biba's expansion into a large boutique on Kensington High Street. From 1970 to 1973 it owned a 70% stake in the business allowing Biba to extend from womenswear into accessories, beauty products, menswear, children's clothing and home goods.
The Burton Group, later known as Arcadia, purchased Dorothy Perkins in 1979.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5298588. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2021, 1909, 1919 and 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dorothy Perkins” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.