Well-known over the past six decades in housewares, former Home editor of The Sunday Times, Liz (Elizabeth) Phillips has died this week, having declined in health over the past few years. Liz’s death comes just a few months after the death of her husband David Phillips, with whom she co-founded Steamer Trading Cookshop in Alfriston in the 1980s.
Liz (nee Good) recognised and reported on the massive change in home and housewares retailing that took place in the 1960s, writing as Home editor of The Sunday Times. She was ‘probably the most influential newspaper home journalist of the time and widely-read chronicler of the things that made the Sixties swing,’ wrote David Phillips about the era.
Liz put the spotlight on the new type of home retailing experience when Habitat opened in the Fulham Road on May 10 1964. She secured an exclusive preview of the store, and quoted Habitat founder Terence Conran in her headline: ‘What the smart chicks are buying.’ She had the vision to predict the pivotal role of fashion in the future of home and housewares retailing.
When Liz reflected on the changes in housewares retailing from the mid 60s onwards, she acknowledged: “If the opening of Habitat in 1964 was the start of a revolution in living and retailing, the striped butcher’s apron was the battledress. The weapons – the batterie de guerre – had to be French cooks’ knives, the Billingsgate rush fish bags the knapsacks and the butcher’s trolley the command post.”
Liz met David when she interviewed him about the ground-breaking lifestyle kitchenware displays at Woollands, the London department store where David was a buyer before he moved to Habitat.
In 1975, the married couple moved away from the housewares arena for a decade, running (and revitalising) the customer-service focused village store and post office in Alfriston, Sussex before opening Steamer Trading Cookshop in the mid 80s.
After opening their second branch of their “serious cookshops with style,” Liz and David’s visionary approach to cookshop retailing was recognised with their first Independent Retailer of the Year Award at the inaugural Excellence in Housewares Awards 2000 (organised by Progressive Housewares in conjunction with the Cookshop & Housewares Association).
Liz and David stepped down from their everyday involvement in the business in 2009. They remained at the heart of their community in Alfriston, where they spent their final years at home together.
Top: Elizabeth (Liz) Good, pictured when she was Home editor of The Sunday Times, reporting on the changes of the swinging sixties. This photo of Liz (to become Phillips) is used here by kind permission of Liz’s family.
