Continuously namedropped in Completely Fabulous – one of the crucial sharpest and funniest sitcoms of the Nineties – London’s maximum iconic style division retailer is up on the market following an important downturn in trade over the past 5 years.
Unfortunately, the retail pressures of a declining luxurious items marketplace and the removing of VAT-free vacationer buying groceries post-Brexit seem to have completed for the once-indomitable Harvey Nichols.
After Harvey’s demise in 1858, his widow Anne Beale entered a trade partnership with Nichols, developing Harvey Nichols & Co, which in the end would develop into one of the vital recognised and fascinating style retail outlets on the earth.
For many years Harvey Nichols has been at the leading edge of luxurious retail, however in March 2024 the gang, which contains regional retail outlets in Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh and Dublin, reported a lack of £34 million.
Harvey Nichols’ flagship retailer in London’s Knightsbridge.
4k Clips / Alamy
Regardless of important funding in refurbishment of the London retailer, rumours of an coming near near sale by way of proprietor and Hong Kong billionaire, Dickson Poon have been making headlines by way of the top of June 2026.
Preliminary pastime within the retailer was once expressed by way of UK high-street style store Subsequent. Extra lately, the Harvey Nichols staff has been obliged to permit Mike Ashley’s Fraser Workforce to go into the public sale. The contest has been additional heightened by way of the announcement that Modella Capital will sign up for the bidders.
Whilst Harvey Nichols’ long term stays unsure, this turns out the most important second to replicate on why this division retailer has been so important to British style and pop culture.
The Ab Fab Impact
Whilst the shop has had a protracted historical past, it was once right through the Nineties – after the Burton Workforce bought it to Poon in 1991 – that Harvey Nichols reached new heights. All through this time I used to be fortunate sufficient to paintings within the Knightsbridge retailer and revel in the upward push of Harvey Nichols from style retailer to cultural icon.
Joanna Lumley and Jennifer Saunders as Patsy and Edina in Completely Fabulous.
BBC
This was once an generation when broadcaster and retail knowledgeable Mary Portas, labored as a window wardrobe for the shop, remodeling Harvey Nichols’ home windows into crowd pleasing “destinations”. Portas additionally sat at the board till she left to release her personal consultancy in 1997.
In 1992 the hedonistic protagonists of recent BBC sitcom Completely Fabulous, style PRs Edina Monsoon and Patsy Stone have been avid Harvey Nichols enthusiasts, taking the shop to an entire new degree of reputation.
Actresses Joanna Lumley and Jennifer Saunders, at the side of the British style fashion designer Betty Jackson, have been incessantly noticed strolling across the retailer, searching for the display’s subsequent iconic appears. Scenes have been now and again filmed there after hours and it was once Patsy and Edina who created the word “Harvey Nicks” and taken it into the language of pop culture.
This was once the Ab Fab impact which helped pressure Harvey Nichols’ position in style and tradition by way of making it a family title.
At the back of the scenes
Whilst the approaching sale of Harvey Nichols fills me with nice unhappiness, it additionally activates fond mirrored image on most of the abnormal reports I had whilst running there in my early life.
My first task within the grand Victorian redbrick Knightsbridge development was once at the newly created fourth-floor division, devoted to house and interiors. I labored within the Ralph Lauren house segment the place I used to be liable for rest room towels, making sure they have been folded completely.
Now not lengthy once I moved right down to the second one surface to what can be a dream task within the shoe division, of which I in the end turned into supervisor. Promoting luxurious footwear required an overly non-public provider that Harvey Nichols was once famend for. This incorporated kneeling prior to your shoppers and taking footwear off and on their toes. The revel in was once to tell my later analysis into the position of fabrics in shoe design.
It was once a time prior to on-line buying groceries and the next reshaping of client behaviour. The bodily retail revel in was once one thing sensory and tactile, from the texture of sumptuous materials to the odor of uplifting fragrances we’d spray in becoming rooms.
It was once an generation when formal get dressed was once required on the market assistants: no naked legs, and under no circumstances a teacher in sight. Get dressed footwear with heels have been anticipated and status for as much as 8 hours an afternoon might be fairly painful.
Harvey Nichols was once very well-liked by the wealthy and well-known. I bear in mind staying past due into the night time for personal buying groceries evenings for celebrities, principally from Hollywood. I additionally recall having to name safety on many events to have press photographers who have been pursuing Princess Diana got rid of from the shop.
A defining generation in style
The Nineties was once a thrilling time in style. It was once the age of the stick insect and the upward push of the fashion designer “diffusion” label (a extra out there, more cost effective assortment), corresponding to As opposed to by way of Versace. This created new alternatives for style retail.
Alexander
Mike Goldwater / Alamy
From cool quirky good looks manufacturers, such because the cultish Exhausting Sweet with its nail polish designed for males, to hotly tipped new designers corresponding to Alexander McQueen, Harvey Nichols was once at all times at the vanguard.
It was once a time of evolution and alter in luxurious style, and for Harvey Nichols this incorporated the improvement in their fifth-floor meals marketplace in 1992, a vastly in style vacation spot for cocktails and people-watching. The crowd additionally opened a top-floor bar and eating place within the iconic Oxo Tower development on London’s Southbank in 1996.
That yr Harvey Nichols additionally opened its first regional retailer in Leeds, adopted by way of Birmingham in 2001. It was once a decade of enlargement and expansion which secured Harvey Nichols’ position as a pacesetter in luxurious style retail and revel in.
