There was a rush to defend the nation’s favourite store in the refurbishment row. But does it deserve our loyalty?
Shopping for a buggy on Oxford Street last year, I had the depressing thought that I have measured out my life in John Lewis departments. Standing among the other parents-to-be waiting to spend £500 on what amounts to a nylon shopping trolley, I remembered being taken to have my feet measured for school shoes. Like it was yesterday, I could feel the incline of the metal plank thing beneath my feet, the pressure of the slidey bit on the top of my toes. I realised it would have been nearly three decades earlier – a real Proustian Kicker in the teeth.
In the intervening years I had found shelves of Lego in the toy department, shoals of tropical fish rendered in ever-higher definition in the TV zone, sensible own-brand beach clothes in menswear. Whenever I embarked on a new stage of life, John Lewis was there, a parent-approved consumer landing zone. Their partners, with dark green badges on their lapels, had sold me my first suit, a toaster for university, entry-level bedlinen. There I was, in the baby zone, subconsciously passing on the baton to my unborn child. Soon, I realised, I would be shopping for comfort footwear, hopefully at street level. There’s a reason John Lewis Christmas ads are always about mortality. Before I knew it, I would be in the coffin section. I assume it has a death division, on the lower-ground floor.
