Designer clique

A cry of "I'm free" echoes around the department store. But this isn't Mr Humphrys of Are You Being Served fame uttering his famous catchphrase from the BBC comedy series. The location is not Grace Brothers but Psyche designer fashion store in Middlesbrough, where a customer is celebrating freeing herself from an item of clothing.

The woman trapped in a Ted Baker top is one of the quirkier moments from a new BBC fly-on-the-changing-room wall documentary series, The Secret Life Of The Shop.

She's unable to extricate herself after putting her head through the wrong straps. Attempts by the assistant to free her prove unsuccessful. They end up cutting the straps to extricate her.

Producer, director and narrator Richard Macer spent a year filming everyday events at the store and has fashioned the results into four one-hour films. His previous documentary subjects include glamour model Jordan and Happy Mondays frontman Shaun Ryder. He also made Sex And The Settee, about a designer furniture mill in Nottingham.

When he decided on a series set in a fashion store, Psyche was suggested by an assistant producer from Middlesbrough. Macer spoke to managing director Steve Cochrane, who agreed to the idea. "We'd approached an awful lot of clothes stores in the country and they'd all said no to cameras," he explains.

"Basically, you end up in a situation where you're looking for an independent, privately-owned store and someone who sees cameras as a positive thing. We wanted to be in the provinces but had nowhere specific in mind at the start.

"What's interesting in hindsight is looking at a high fashion store in a small town and how a clothes shop selling very expensive designer labels operates there. Its role is entirely different to what it would be in a big city.

"Psyche is a fantastic, unique shop and feels like an anomaly in Middlesbrough in many ways. Steve Cochrane has done a fantastic job with it but wants to create a sense of Covent Garden in the area to bring Middlesbrough up a peg or two."

Psyche was named Best New Store in the 2004 Drapers Awards, as well as landing the Retailer of the Year award, ahead of the likes of Harvey Nichols.

For Macer, the project kept him in Middlesbrough for the best part of a year. Originally commissioned as a one-hour documentary, it became a series after early filming showed the amount of material available for the programme.

'I moved into the Thistle Hotel every Monday and stayed four or five days in Middlesbrough each week. That was basically my life," he says. "I think I slept in every room in the hotel and got on first name terms with staff in the restaurant. It was a peculiar life."

Filming wasn't always straightforward. The first episode, The Trouble With Ladies Wear, focuses on a tense and tearful time in the women's department. Bitching and feuding contributes to store wars among staff.

"I was there with a researcher and occasionally an assistant producer, and quite often just on my own. It was a very small team. I went down when the store opened and hung out with the staff to see what developed," he says.

"Filming could be an ordeal. It's been very fraught at times. The thing about a shop like Psyche is that it's not natural terrain for fantastic television. It's not like filming in a police station or hospital where you have people getting arrested or dying all the time," says Macer.

"Not a lot happens, but it's my job to explore the small things in people's lives and make them interesting. It's quite a big shop so it was difficult to know where to spend time and nurture relationships. It took me time to build up confidence among staff."

He didn't have to work too hard in ladies' wear to find good TV. Or in men's wear in where competition to increase sales led to intense rivalry among staff. But overall, he likens making this observational documentary to an angler sitting on the river bank looking at his float and waiting for something to bite.

Not everybody at Psyche was keen to be filmed. "Some of the staff really wanted to take part, others didn't want to. Some were a little suspicious or wary, some were won over and came on board after a while," he says.

Notices were put up in the store to alert customers that the BBC was filming, but many of them, including the trapped woman mentioned at the start, were happy to be filmed.

Steve Cochrane has seen the first episode, Macer reports, and was happy with it but he's aware that some female staff might not always like what they see. "I hope they'll be all right with it. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the women were concerned about the first one because it touches on such sensitive matters," he says.

Being around so many good clothes, Macer couldn't resist a spot of shopping himself. He bought himself trainers and a T-shirt for a friend. "I tried an awful lot of stuff on, that's for sure, just to pass the time. The boys would have a good time taking the mickey out of me," he says.

He didn't worry about filming "real" people after stars such as Jordan and Shaun Ryder because he finds people in all walks of life fascinating. "It's quite an honour to spend some time in different people's lives and be taken into their confidence. It's much more rewarding than hanging out with people who are celebrities."

* The Secret Life Of The Shop begins on BBC3 tomorrow at 9pm.

Published: 16/04/2005