One of the swankiest department stores in the Fragrant Harbour will leave the city’s tenaciously high-end shopping centre, The Landmark

Reading the many news reports on the impending closure of the luxury department store Harvey Nichols in Hong Kong, we were told that one of the city’s poshest department store will shutter in March next year due to the slowing of tourist traffic from mainland China. The Chinese who visit are thought to prefer experiences that do not involve shopping. The Hong Kong-owned British department store was brought into the city by the retail corporation Dickson Concepts in 2005. According to the company, retail spending among locals and the once-mighty China shoppers have dipped considerably, even during traditionally sales-boosting periods, such as Golden Week. In addition, as observers noted, there is competition to Hong Kong as a shopping hub from the duty-free 海南岛 (Hainan island), home of the world’s largest duty-free mall, cdf Haikou International Duty Free City. It is hard to imagine Chinese consumers with reduced appetites for luxury products in Hong Kong, especially when they are still seen to shop fervently elsewhere, such as on our island, but the approaching closure of Harvey Nichols seems to bear that out.

Harvey Nichols arrived in Hong Kong when there was already the established luxury department store, now-173-year-old Lane Crawford, whose parent company Lane Crawford Joyce Group also own the city’s premier multi-label fashion retailer Joyce. Lane Crawford is not only very present, with multiple stores in the SAR, they are also in Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu; their unmistakable swankiness intact no matter the city, to the extent that they faced no perceivable threat even when Japan’s Seibu opened, just doors away, their flagship in Hong Kong at Pacific Place, Admiralty, in 1990 (eventually a subsidiary of Dickson Concepts, but they closed in 2011; the space is now Harvey Nichols’s second HK store). Through the years, Lane Crawford lost a considerable number of the luxury labels they carried with considerable allure in the early days (the European principals later preferred opening their own store), but with the help of 53-year-old Joyce’s own beautifully merchandised mix, they kept above the retail fray in the Chinese port city.

Harvey Nichols was founded in London in 1831. They started as a linen shop before expanding into a department store (which is rather reminiscent of own Tangs) in the late 1800s. Through the latter years, the ownership of the store went through several hands. In 1991, Dickson Concepts’ main man Dickson Poon (潘廸生)—once married to recent Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh (杨紫琼)—acquired Harvey Nichols from it previous owner, the Burton Group, for £53 million, according to The Guardian. During the early years after the acquisition, the department store was so noted for their appealing luxury offerings that it even featured in the hit, campy British comedy series, Absolutely Fabulous, in which protagonists Edina Monsoon and Patsy Stone frequently referred to the store’s Knightsbridge flagship as their favourite, even when their fashion choices were, at best, dubious. The store was also known for some of the most cutting-edge labels of the era—Hussein Chalayan, for example, amid the quieter Donna Karan. A fashion writer told SOTD that it was in London’s Harvey Nichols in the ’90s that he first saw Jean Paul Gautier’s skirts for men.

In Hong Kong, Harvey Nichols open in The Landmark in the upmarket Central district with some fanfare, but the initial excitement in its entry into Asia did not quite hold up. Harvey Nichols touts itself as “the ultimate destination for luxury fashion and beauty” and it took that seriously, but in time, ultimate was not quite enough when much of shopping everywhere went online. To be certain, it was an attractive flagship, and being the only department store in the mall, it could lure those customers who would not be comfortable entering a freestanding boutique, of which there were (and are) many in The Landmark. And while Harvey Nichols is luxuriously appointed, it has been a rather cold, energy-starved store, with service that is oftentimes indifferent. It occupies five stories that spread across 60,000 sq ft (or about 5,574 sq m) in the Queen’s Road Central-facing side of The Landmark. And perhaps, therein lies the disadvantage. The highly-regarded Joyce is just across the street, until they vacated the space last year. But all is not lost, yet. Harvey Nichols at Pacific Place, where Seibu once stood, remains.

Photos: (top) The Landmark and (bottom): Harvey Nichols