Debenhams lights up Oxford Street

People who have been talking for years, with doom‐laden relish, about the death of the department store should take a trip to London's Oxford Street and take a look at the new Debenhams. Elegant, brilliantly lit, and with a generous approach to the use of space, the new store provides an appropriate backdrop for fashion merchandise which is sharply and colourfully contemporary. If the store doesn't quite have that deeply luxurious, self‐confident feel of the best department stores in Zurich, for example, or Copenhagen, then that in itself reflects the mood of 1980s Britain and the dichotomy of its economy — superficial glitter successfully concealing deeper uncertainties. And whatever happened to the much‐vaunted galleria idea? David Sands reports.