The curious story of Ann Summers

I always thought that ‘Ann Summers’ was one of those made-up names created by corporate brains, like Dorothy Perkins and Ted Baker. But it turns out that Ms Summers was an actual person. 

The store’s founder Michael Caborn-Waterfield named his first shop after his 19-year-old secretary Annice Summers. ‘Dandy Kim’, as he was known, had been a roguish figure around post-war London, a gentleman adventurer who’d smuggled guns into Cuba, dated Diana Dors and served time in a French jail. Described in Jeremy Scott’s memoir Fast and Louche: Confessions of a Flagrant Sinner as ‘an amusing, good-looking man’ who ‘seemed to take nothing entirely seriously’, this one-time actor and trader in black-market nylons opened his first ‘sex shop’ near Marble Arch in 1970. 

During our youth, my friends and I used to loiter around our local Ann Summers. Gawping at lingerie-clad mannequins was the closest thing we had to an erotic experience – that and flicking through Kays catalogues. At the time I remember thinking ‘Why “maids’ outfits”?’ and ‘Does alluring underwear really need to be that garish?’.