Sorry darling, you've lost it

Is Harvey Nichols nixed? Once the favourite store of Edina, Patsy and the It Girls, the fashion mecca has recently gained a faint air of depression.

One afternoon this week the first floor, hotspot for the world's most sought-after labels in the Eighties, was all but deserted. It felt a sad, unhappening place, patrolled by personnel more interested in gossiping than helping a customer like me. "Where are the evening frocks?" I pleaded. "Oh", came the reply, "Everyone does bits and bobs." So I followed her vague wave of the hand - down the escalator and out of the door.

Joseph Wan, Harvey Nichols's group chief executive, may point to the absence of tourists since 9/11, but that's not the whole explanation. In upmarket stores, you're either hot or you're not. London department stores need buzz to sustain a fashion frenzy. They need to be places you just want to be in, even if you're not actually shopping.

Harvey Nichols had that in spades. It revelled in its own sense of humour, celebrating the embrace of the champagne-swilling, spendthrift Ab Fab girls. But that was a couple of years ago - ancient history as far as the short-attention-span mentality of fashion shoppers is concerned. Since the Italian Vittorio Radice turned around the sleeping dinosaur that once was Selfridges, I'm afraid it's been curtains for Harvey Nicks's cred.