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.
This week has been an eye-opening reminder that with a diminished church and no wars to fight, British patriotism takes the form of loyalty to shops. Attacks on these shops are taken as attacks on our character. When Tatler reported that the prime minister and his fiancee, Carrie Symonds, had been desperate to overhaul the “John Lewis furniture nightmare” they inherited from Theresa May, the nation went into meltdown.
The media protested at this assault on the nation’s favourite retailer. Crony contracts and bodies piled high are one thing, but woe betide the prime minister who insults a department store. Showing the wit and lightness of touch that comes so naturally to him, Sir Keir Starmer was photographed looking at John Lewis wallpaper just three days after the story broke. By Friday, Johnson had been moved to distance himself from the outcry. “I love John Lewis,” he said.
The damage had been done. Reporters were dispatched to learn whether the disrespect had “cut through”, a term newspapers use for information that reaches people who don’t spend all day on Twitter. The political impact was apparently negligible, but that wasn’t the point. Johnson could lamp David Attenborough on Strictly and still enjoy a 10-point poll lead. Really, it was an excuse for everyone to talk about their childhoods. Shops serve as a kind of socioeconomic GPS, where everyone can be triangulated precisely using two or three brands. We study M&S profit warnings like ancient Romans looking at hens. In this taxonomy, John Lewis is a fixed point. Are you Selfridges-White Company-John Lewis or Primark-Matalan-John Lewis? Answer carefully.
It follows that when John Lewis is attacked, people’s defences reflect what they think of themselves. Some go full Four Yorkshiremen. Who are all these out-of-touch metropolitan elites saying John Lewis is normal? Where I come from, having a John Lewis jumper’s like wearing head-to-toe Armani! We used to dream of John Lewis! Then there’s the chattering-class default, which is to assert that “Johnny Lulu” is perfectly good and why, my own kitchen’s from there, good honest shop for honest people. Finally there’s the aristocratic take, which is to refer only to Peter Jones, as any mention of the parent firm betrays that you shop somewhere other than Sloane Square.
Amid all this embarrassing posturing there’s an awkward truth: John Lewis is not what it was. When you look at the world around it, the surprise is that it has proved so resilient. Long after its rivals have bitten the dust, John Lewis has trundled on, powered increasingly by nostalgia. If we’re honest with ourselves, though, the lustre has come off. Jeff Bezos, Mike Ashley and Lulu Lytle are eating its lunch. John Lewis could price-match the competition as long as they too had to rent a large floorspace in central London. When its rivals started to live only in the cloud and a distant warehouse, it had to abandon its policy.
Now John Lewis, too, relies on internet sales.
Recently it announced it would be converting swathes of the Oxford Street store into offices. If the shop finds itself out of time, so is our bizarre attachment to it. Besides, it turns out that it doesn’t actually sell coffins after all: never knowingly undertakers. Amazon does, though. Maybe I’ll get mine from there instead.