Lee Bender
Bus Stop

Lee Bender studied at the famous St Martin’s School of Art and the London School of Fashion. She opened the Bus Stop store on Kensington Church Street together with her husband Cecil in 1968 as a retailing outlet for her manufacturing business. By 1969 they had moved next door to the ultra famous BIBA store – eventually going on to become a successful chain of twelve stores nation-wide. Its aim was to tell accessibly priced clothes to young people.

Typically Lee Bender’s designs took their inspiration from the 1940’s, accentuating shoulders and waists. She used puffed sleeves, sweetheart necklines, jazzy colours and materials that bordered on sleaze (such as shiny Rayon). She used her own name label concurrently with the Bus Stop label, both were sold in the Bus Stop store.

Bus Stop was so named because of its quintessential English connotations – it was painted red like those other famous London landmarks – the red bus, the telephone box (as was) and the letter-box. It shared an affinity with the glam-rock look of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust.

Although it survived longer than its neighbour BIBA - it was eventually purchased by French Connection in 1979.

Lee and her husband opened up a new boutique in London in 1982 by the name of Arcade.