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That was the magic of Topshop in its heyday: it made you feel part of a club whose only membership criterion was that you loved fashion. As a teen, I thought the Edinburgh store was as exciting as shopping got. Then I clapped eyes on Topshop Oxford Circus.
Kate Moss in 2007, posing in the window of Topshop’s Oxford Street store to launch her first collection
The internet might have democratised fashion – anyone anywhere can buy a pair of Topshop jeans – but it can never replicate the heart-thumping joy of gliding down those escalators into 90,000 square feet of ‘It’ clothes and wondering whether you’d bump into Alexa Chung or Joan Collins (in my three decades as a Topshop customer, I saw both browsing the aisles). It lured you in, whether you were 18 or 80. And if you were Beyoncé, it smuggled you in after hours, via a secret entrance, to shop uninterrupted by the hordes.