When Janet Morice thinks of David Jones , she thinks back to postwar Melbourne in 1946, when she would visit the store as a child. “I would put on my best clothes, my mother would put on her hat and gloves, and we would go to afternoon tea at the department store,” she says. Peering through the Christmas displays at the Elizabeth Street store in Sydney’s CBD, the 87-year-old says it is “really, really sad” to think the country’s oldest department store could close.
Metres away, on the ground floor of the flagship store, some shelves sit empty, cleared of their designer accessories within hours of David Jones going into administration on Thursday morning. “My partner has just said to me ‘Let’s go and say goodbye, because today it’s closing’. And it’s heartbreaking.” While David Jones is not shutting immediately, the future of the 188-year-old retailer is highly uncertain, and some under-performing stores are expected to be closed imminently .
The company had fallen behind on rent, culminating in a breakdown of negotiations with its primary landlord, Westfield owner Scentre Group. Grandparents Louise and Tim Cook outside David Jones on Elizabeth Street in Sydney. Photograph: Achol Arok/The Guardian The upheaval follows years of steep losses and underperforming stores that left the retailer vulnerable, only for conditions to deteriorate further as high interest rates and cost-of-living pressures led to a pullback in customer spending.
Morice’s partner, Andrew Star, has shopped at David Jones for more than 40 years. While he says the news is sad, he believes he mourned the department store a long time ago – and feels it “lost its identity” years ago. “They lost their legacy when they started doing everything up,” he says.
“What’s the point of coming into David Jones when you’ve got Chanel and Versace and things like that all the way through it? They had their own brands for a while, and they were good, solid, dependable clothes. Now they’ve sacrificed all that.” While business appears to be operating as normal on several floors on Thursday afternoon, a few outlets had already stripped their shelves bare.
Employees at a couple of the empty stands told Guardian Australia they had received orders to shut up shop, with no further details about what would happen to the store or to them. The upmarket retailer employs more than 6,000 staff across 38 stores. The David Jones chief executive, Erica Berchtold, said there was a “well developed plan on how to reset the business” and that the retailer would work with the administrators, receivers and its secured lender.
Mark Nelson, outside David Jones in Sydney, said ‘it could be the last time we see the iconic David Jones Christmas display’. Photograph: Achol Arok/The Guardian Grandparents Tim and Louise Cook are among those who stopped by the store to “say goodbye” to its famous Christmas display. They brought their grandson, Billy, fearing it could be his “first and last time”.
The store has been part of the family’s lives for a long time, and they reminisce about many Christmas-time visits. Tim smiles as he recalls how he “got my son’s wedding tie here” four years ago. “All of our childhood, that was the place we’d go shopping,” Louise says.
“It’ll be seriously missed,” Tim adds. Mark Nelson has spent the morning photographing the Christmas displays after his wife asked him to capture them. “It could be a very sad occasion, because it could be the last time we see the iconic David Jones Christmas display,” he says.
“It is an Australian institution, so it will be a loss.” The retired university maths professor says he came to love David Jones through his first girlfriend after arriving in Australia from the UK almost 30 years ago. “She worked at David Jones, so she started getting me to come to David Jones. The girlfriend may have gone, but the attachment to David Jones has continued,” he says.
“Don’t tell my wife.”
Source: The Guardian
