Ramsay & Ramsay

RAMSAY AND RAMSAY, 211, 213, and 215, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow.

    A notable acquisition to Glasgow’s high-class silk mercery trade is presented in the business of Messrs. Ramsay & Ramsay, whose establishment at Sauchiehall Street — opened only last year — has already become a widely-favoured and influential centre of West End commerce.

    With characteristic push and enterprise the firm have evinced considerable promptitude in responding to the busy and increasing demands which the merits of their business have elicited, and to the original departments of the house (which have been subjected to complete re-arrangement) they have now added those of millinery, black dress goods, and mournings. The paramount consideration that has been devoted to the comfort and convenience of lady patrons is well noted in the furnishing of the fitting room and mantle saloon, both of which are replete with attractions calculated to engage the admiration of the most fastidious. Ladies may here survey at perfect leisure the many handsome novelties in coats, capes, paletots, and jackets, and Messrs. Ramsay & Ramsay possess excellent facilities for the practical adaptation of these — if need be — to the purchaser’s express wishes or taste.

    With a keen regard for the fluctuating choice which the caprices of fashion are apt to develop on the part of customers, the firm make a special study of the prevalent modes, and these are reproduced with an accuracy and exactitude only ensured by prompt anticipation of the season’s mutations. On the occasion of the writer’s visit, Messrs. Ramsay & Ramsay were inaugurating their first spring show, and this is apparently destined to become a great and popular feature during the prosperous career of the house in time to come. Wherever the eye rests in this fashionable business centre it is at once gratified with the pervasion of genuine novelties, alike in black and coloured silks, Scotch, English, and French fabrics, and becoming head-dresses, of all of which the firm maintain a magnificent profusion, embracing every tempting specialty of the home and continental markets. In millinery, especially, the designs illustrate all the most artistic developments of the day, while choice Parisian models are represented in tea gowns, dinner dresses, and costumes of all kinds, ladies’ tailor-made gowns, tailor-made jackets and coats, all cut and designed with Metropolitan taste. In these as well as in perfect-fitting trousseaux, Messrs. Ramsay & Ramsay have cultivated a special feature, and the range of silks and dress goods, submitted for selection and comparison in the windows and all round the establishment, are all alike recherché in tint, fabric, and general design.

    The external appearance of the house is dignified by its large and very attractive frontage, and of the interior, which extends rearwards over a stretch of 90ft. The front portion comprises the shop and warehouse, while the back portion forms the show rooms, and is effectively lighted from the large glass roof. The fitting and work rooms are adjoining, and all practical details are under the immediate supervision of the principals, by whom everything is closely scrutinised before being sent out.

    Messrs. Ramsay & Ramsay have so far superseded the usages of high-class trade as to be able to produce and provide the best class of goods at exceptionally moderate prices, a principle which has found ample recognition in the support and growing patronage of a better-class clientele. The future of the firm is well indicated in the rapid success they have attained during the first year of business ; and notwithstanding the competitive aspects of modem times there is everything to justify the assertion that, with combined energy, perseverance, and judiciously applied capital, Messrs. Ramsay & Ramsay can capably compete with any other houses representing those branches of fashionable trade in which they have become so rapidly successful.

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