I was in the middle of a client call last month when my mom texted me asking where she should buy towels now. Not exactly urgent, but there was something about the way she phrased it – this slight confusion, like she’d been wandering around Boston for an hour looking for something that doesn’t exist. Then I remembered: she was visiting from Atlanta, and back home, she would’ve just gone to… well, probably Macy’s or Nordstrom. But she was thinking about how things used to work when she lived in London for those two years in the ’90s. She missed Debenhams.
Which got me thinking about my own relationship with that store during my year abroad at LSE, and how devastating its closure must have been for British women who’d built their entire shopping routines around it. Because here’s the thing – when a store you’ve relied on for decades just disappears, you don’t just lose a place to shop. You lose a whole system that worked for you.
I remember Debenhams from my student days in London, and even as a twenty-something American who was mostly broke, I could see why British women loved it. It wasn’t trying to be Harrods, but it wasn’t Primark either. You could get decent basics, some makeup, maybe a blazer that wouldn’t fall apart after three washes. The kind of middle-ground shopping that honestly doesn’t exist much in the US – we tend to go straight from Target to department stores with not much in between.
When Debenhams finally closed in 2021 after 243 years, I watched the coverage from Boston with genuine sadness. Not just because I have fond memories of wandering through their Oxford Street location when I was homesick and needed retail therapy, but because I understood what that loss meant for women who’d never shopped anywhere else for certain things. These weren’t casual customers – these were women who’d bought their first bras there, their wedding guest outfits, their children’s school uniforms.
The women I know in London (mostly friends from business school who stayed in the UK) described it exactly like grief. Sarah, who works in consulting, told me she still sometimes plans to meet friends “at Debenhams” before remembering it’s gone. That’s not just habit – that’s muscle memory built over twenty or thirty years of the same shopping patterns.
What’s fascinating is watching where everyone scattered afterward. It’s like when your favorite restaurant closes and suddenly you realize how much of your social life was built around that one place – except this affects your entire wardrobe strategy.
From what I’ve observed through my London friends and some deep Instagram research (yes, I went down that rabbit hole), Marks & Spencer seems to be the biggest winner. Which makes sense – they already had the middle-market positioning and the quality reputation. Plus they’ve actually improved their clothing recently. I ordered some pieces during a London trip last year and was impressed. Much better fit than I remembered from my student days.
But here’s what’s interesting from an American perspective: the idea that one store closing could disrupt so many women’s shopping habits shows how different retail culture is in the UK. In the US, we’re used to stores coming and going. Circuit City disappeared, nobody really cared. Borders closed, we moved to Amazon. But British women seemed to have much deeper loyalty to specific retailers.
My friend Emma, who’s in her fifties and works in marketing in Manchester, described the adjustment as genuinely difficult. She’d had the same routine for twenty years – Debenhams for work clothes, maybe some homeware, definitely Christmas presents for her mother-in-law. Suddenly she’s shopping at four different places to replace what used to be one stop. “It’s not just inconvenient,” she told me, “it’s exhausting. I have to make decisions about where to go for everything, when before it was automatic.”
The beauty department seems to be particularly missed. In the US, we have Sephora and Ulta competing with department store beauty counters, so there are lots of options. But apparently Debenhams had this specific sweet spot – more variety than Boots, more accessible than the fancy department stores. Women keep mentioning missing the ability to try things before buying, which honestly surprises me because I do almost all my beauty shopping online now. But I’m younger, and I grew up with online returns being normal.
What’s really striking is how this has forced older women into online shopping whether they wanted to or not. My friend’s mother, who’s 68, had never bought clothes online before Debenhams closed. Now she orders from M&S and ASOS (with heavy guidance from her daughter) and has actually discovered she likes having more options. But she still prefers going to physical stores when possible.
The homeware migration seems more scattered. Some women went to Next, others to Dunelm, some just started buying towels at Tesco. It’s functional but not particularly satisfying. One woman told me she misses being able to see how everything looked together in one place, which I totally get. When you’re trying to redecorate or even just replace basics, having everything coordinated in the same store makes the decisions easier.
John Lewis captured some of the higher-end customers, but that’s expected. What’s interesting is that some women describe John Lewis as feeling “too fancy” for everyday shopping. Like you need a reason to go there, whereas Debenhams was somewhere you could just pop in for whatever you needed.
The online version of Debenhams still exists, but from what I can tell, it’s basically unrecognizable. Boohoo bought the brand and turned it into fast fashion for twenty-somethings. Which is probably smart business but doesn’t help the actual former customers at all. It’s like if someone bought the Banana Republic name and turned it into Forever 21.
From a business perspective, what’s interesting is that no single retailer has managed to capture all of what Debenhams offered. The market has just fragmented. Women are shopping at M&S for basics, John Lewis for special occasions, various online retailers for trends, Boots for beauty. It’s probably better selection overall, but definitely more work.
And honestly? That might not be entirely bad. I know several women who say they make better purchasing decisions now because they’re not just defaulting to one store. They compare options, they think more about what they actually need. The convenience of Debenhams might have made shopping easier, but it also made it more automatic.
Still, there’s something to be said for retail loyalty and the comfort of knowing exactly where to find what you need. In the US, we’ve lost a lot of that as shopping has moved online and stores have become more interchangeable. Maybe British women had something we don’t – a deeper relationship with the places where they shop, a sense of these stores being part of their community rather than just transaction points.
My mom finally figured out the towel situation, by the way. She ended up at Selfridges, which was probably three times what she would’ve spent at Debenhams but made her feel better about the whole experience. Sometimes retail therapy is worth the extra cost.
The women who are adapting best seem to be the ones who’ve embraced the fragmentation as an opportunity rather than fighting it. They’re shopping more deliberately, discovering new brands, maybe enjoying the variety. But they all still miss the simplicity of knowing exactly where to go for anything they needed. And honestly, watching this happen from across the Atlantic makes me appreciate the retail options we do have here – even if they’re not perfect.
By day, Jasmine works in finance. By night, she writes about making corporate fashion actually interesting. Her Boston wardrobe proves office-appropriate doesn’t have to mean boring, and that investment dressing can be both powerful and personal.
