Brothers Clemens and August Brenninkmeyer (hence C&A) left their hometown of Mettingen, Germany, and opened up a textile warehouse in Sneek in the Netherlands in 1841.

The first C&A store opened there in 1861 and was a great success being one of the first outlets to offer "ready-to-wear" fashions for women in various sizes to a broad public at reasonable prices. The company grew and, by 1910, succeeded in opening a substantial number of stores in the Netherlands. Another store opened in Germany in 1911 and in England in 1922. Another wave of stores opened from the 1960s, in Belgium (1963), France (1972), Switzerland (1977, Luxembourg (1982), Spain (1983). Austria (1984), Portugal (1991), the Czech Republic (1999), Poland (2001), Hungary (2002) and Russia (2005).
Today it has 865 main shops around the world, (not including its specialist stores.)

When C & A opened its flagship store in Oxford Street, London in 1922 the idea of women's ready-to-wear clothing was completely new. More stores were opened in Liverpool (1924), Birmingham (1926) and Manchester (1928).

Menswear was introduced in 1957 and during the 1960s the bikini the mini-skirt were promoted. The Clockhouse fashion range, which followed, was specifically aimed the young market and the Westbury range was aimed at businessmen. In 2000 C & A operations in the UK were closed down, involving the closure of 120 shops around the country. At this time C & A donated its UK marketing archive to HAT. Today the C & A company HQ is in Brussels and Dusseldorf and is an enterprise of COFRA Holdings AG.

See: www.c-and-a.com

Archive content

Date range: 1922-2000

Scope/Formats

The collection includes the company's annual advertising guardbooks dating from 1922 to 2000 illustrating men's, women's and children's fashions. Most of the advertisements include a fashion plate, retail prices, the brand names of fabrics used, titles of press and periodicals in which the ads appeared and their exact dates. The collection features its famous 'Man at C & A' campaigns of the 1960s and '70s, a host of 'teenage' fashions and those worn by older age groups and advertisements for store openings all over the country showing the new architecture of the post war period.