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Harrods sold us a fantasy Al Fayed's downfall tells the story of London

'Harrods is not just a luxury brand but, in some peculiarly British way, a popular one' (Photo by John Phillips/Getty Images for Harrods)

'Harrods is not just a luxury brand but, in some peculiarly British way, a popular one' (Photo by John Phillips/Getty Images for Harrods)


September 27, 2024   5 mins

As recently as 2018, Harrods, the luxury department store in Knightsbridge, was home to one of London’s more macabre shop displays. It featured a small, pyramid-shaped cabinet, containing a lipstick-smeared wine glass and a ring. Above these relics were portraits of the couple that had handled them not long before their death, their faces joined by an elaborate swirling frame. They were Dodi Fayed, the son of former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed, and Diana, Princess of Wales. The pair perished in a car accident in 1997.

Al Fayed himself died last year at the age of 94, having sold Harrods to the Qatari royal family in 2010. He will therefore remain unanswerable to the dozens of women who, following a BBC investigation, have accused him of sexual assault and harassment over the past week. A tragic evasion, but typical of the slippery Al Fayed, a man whose life story appears consciously crafted for novelists and filmmakers — essentially a cross between The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Godfather. The outlines of that tale can be found in his bizarre shrine to Diana and Dodi.

Orchestrating an affair between his son and the recently divorced princess was part of Al Fayed’s long-term efforts to penetrate the British upper classes. This campaign involved country houses, Rolls Royces, fine tailoring, and of course the prestigious institution of Harrods itself, a dubious acquisition that launched years of legal proceedings and official investigations. By most accounts, Al Fayed came across as a short-tempered buffoon, yet he was cunning enough to leave a string of powerful individuals fuming in his wake. The list includes a Haitian dictator, numerous business connections in the West and the Arab Gulf states, as well as the British politicians he bribed and then, when it suited him, exposed as corrupt.

His repertoire tended to involve claims of an illustrious heritage in the Middle East — hence the addition of the honorific “al” to his name in 1974. Hence, also, the choice of a pyramid to entomb Diana’s wine glass; Al Fayed used to claim that he himself would be mummified in a glass pyramid on the roof of Harrods. In reality, he had risen from the slums of Alexandria, Egypt, the son of a school inspector.

But Al Fayed’s personal aspirations and depravities should not distract us from his real achievements as an illusionist. His sentimental exploitation of Diana, “the people’s princess” as Tony Blair called her, suggests that he had other audiences in mind. His extravagant, superficial vision of Britishness may not have fooled the old money whose acceptance he craved, but it has turned out to be strangely successful with both wealthy foreign clients and the public at home.

The recent history of Harrods is, in large part, the story of London’s eminence as a global hub for private wealth. Though Britain is not a fabulously rich country — in terms of economic output per person, it ranks 20 or 30-something in the world, depending on the source — it is very good at attracting rich individuals, hosting the third highest number of millionaires globally. This has a lot to do with the City of London’s status as a financial hub, not least its role, over the past 70 years or so, in handling transactions between foreign entities, and helping to divert global wealth to offshore tax havens. (In 2022, Russia’s attack on Ukraine briefly drew attention to the possibility that, shockingly, not all the cash flowing to “Londongrad” was entirely clean.)

Other attractions include the UK’s controversial “non-dom” status, allowing wealth earned and kept overseas to avoid tax for 15 years, and “golden visas” that offer fast-tracked residency rights in exchange for investment. Add to this the appeal of the London property market, with more than 62,000 London homes registered to overseas owners.

But we should not overlook the importance of lifestyle and status symbols. Britain has a genius for luring High Net-Worth Individuals into a kind of fantasy world — a world where the First World War never happened, and the most modern luxuries somehow coexist with an eternal Edwardian splendour. Townhouses in Mayfair and Chelsea maintain their stately exteriors, even as they conceal vast underground swimming pools and garages stuffed with Range Rovers. Public schools and universities offer their overseas students the trappings of British tradition, together with the most up-to-date facilities. From the Old War Office in Whitehall (now the Raffles OWO hotel) to Admiralty Arch in Trafalgar Square (soon to be a Waldorf Astoria), London’s architectural heritage is being sold off and repurposed for luxury hospitality.

“Britain has a genius for luring High Net-Worth Individuals into a kind of fantasy world.”

This is a trend that Al Fayed’s Harrods anticipated and tested to the limit. Its baroque facades and cavernous, gorgeously decorated interiors, along with a heavy emphasis on its British heritage, provide an irresistible veil of respectability and aesthetic refinement (“enter a different world”, as the store’s slogan used to go). Behind that veil, as recent testimonies claim, Al Fayed oversaw an insidious regime of surveillance and intimidation. But it also provided an ideal backdrop for the increasingly cosmopolitan business of luxury retail, where “pretty graduate English girls” with white skin — Al Fayed’s specifications, according to a former HR employee — sold Italian handbags, French perfumes and Swiss watches to wealthy clients from all corners of Eurasia. By 2020, Chinese customers were responsible for 25% of sales at Harrods, while the store claimed that it represented half of Middle-Eastern spending in the UK.

It is one thing to entertain foreign customers in this way; more remarkable is that, all the while, institutions such as Harrods have maintained their position as familiar landmarks in British life. Perhaps this is my own foreign background speaking, but even as a child, I was vaguely aware that public life in the UK was littered with grand-sounding traditions which had been popularised as tourist attractions, from Ascot and Wimbledon to the royal family itself. Harrods was one of the words in this lexicon. The store’s glamorous visitors occupied the gossip pages in much the same way, it now occurs to me, that the personal lives of the aristocracy had a century earlier. The shrine to Diana and Dodi should be seen in this context: it showed an understanding that Harrods is not just a luxury brand but, in some peculiarly British way, a popular one.

The broader point is that we have been more accepting of the fantasies created by the likes of Al Fayed than we like to admit. London’s “private wealth community”, as its richest inhabitants are sometimes hilariously called, has long enjoyed the blessing of British governments. New Labour and Tory chancellors have justified its privileged treatment on the grounds that, if such individuals are not appeased, they will simply take their money and businesses elsewhere. But such threats have been successful because another, unspoken logic has been operating at the same time. As much of Britain has struggled economically, the ability to attract a wealthy elite — and one that celebrates traditional symbols of Britishness — has provided the illusion of a successful, affluent country. Even people whose own experience contradicts this idea might still want to believe it.

But the allegations against Al Fayed, however, have come as London’s appeal to private wealth appears to be waning. With Labour’s plan to trim down non-doms’ benefits (which the Conservatives promised as well), and to levy VAT on private education, the advisory firm Henley & Partners is predicting the departure of almost 10,000 millionaires from the UK this year. Only China faces a larger exodus. In fact, Britain has been shedding wealthy residents since 2017. This is partly due to the decline of the London Stock Exchange and Brexit-related shifts in finance and trade. But other causes include a deteriorating health system and rising crime — including violent watch thefts outside Harrods itself. The real London can no longer be kept separate from the imagined one.

And it seems that the symbols of British heritage can simply be transplanted overseas. China has facsimile public schools, Hogwarts-inspired architecture and a mock-Tudor town; now Harrods has opened a private members’ club in Shanghai.

So we may soon get a test of the claim that losing the very wealthy will damage the UK’s prospects. There is doubtless some truth in it: generally speaking, capital flight is not a sign of economic health. But the decline of High Net-Worth London may also bring some benefits. Perhaps it will force our politicians to finally address the economic malaise of much of Britain outside the South East — and deny us the luxury of taking guilty pride in Knightsbridge.


Wessie du Toit writes about culture, design and ideas. His Substack is The Pathos of Things.

wessiedutoit

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Brian Kneebone
Brian Kneebone
18 days ago

The UK is not a poor country; it’s a country that could and should be 20 to 30 percent wealthier. Blame politicians that allowed this to be the case, since the 1960’s.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
18 days ago
Reply to  Brian Kneebone

Definitely agree it could be wealthier but I think it goes back further then the 1960’s, an education system geared towards the arts and that placed a low value on the practical subjects such as engineering. Germany springs to mind where this is valued. We have never fully exploited the economic opportunities that were born here. We may be a cultural superpower but certainly not a industrial one.

David Giles
David Giles
17 days ago

Aah right. So losing foreign investment will be good for us.
Lucky us, being so worthy.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
17 days ago

Britain is getting poorer because the many of the inhabitants have gone off the whole idea of hard work; and we are ruled by third rate politicians who will not do anything about this, and indeed think that socialism makes everything prosperous. It’s that long hangover left by Empire where we simply (still) cannot admit that the world does not owe us a living.
So we have lived for years from the crumbs off the tables of the super-rich who we have attracted to live here or at least to shop here or pass their money through the City. Now, as the writer says, this is all ending; the smart money is going somewhere more friendly and fashionable and efficient; our government of Tory incompetence is being followed by a government of incompetence and fantasy; the City has lost its buccaneering, inventive spirit and is ruled by regulators and a singularly incompetent Bank of England.
As that outgoing Chancellor said; “Sorry, there is no money.”
How do we get out of this and remain an open tolerant enterprising freedom loving democracy? It will need a political party with a leader of strength, guile, honesty, and drive, which is prepared to understand and argue for the need to work longer, to invest more, to create and retain wealth, to protect only the genuinely disadvantaged, and a population which will vote for this and to work hard to get it.
Don’t see it myself. Emigration may be the answer.

Tony Price
Tony Price
17 days ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

Out of the last 54 years we have had, near enough, a Labour government for 18 years and Tory one for 36 years – twice as long. Quite how that adds up to socialism being at fault is a mystery to me.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
17 days ago
Reply to  Tony Price

That’s an easy one. For about 6 months E Heath began liberation of the economy and the citizenry. But Iain McLeod’s death had done for any real hope for that and Heath retreated to interventionist orthodoxy.

Then we had 12 years of real change under Mrs T, glorious times; followed by Major sliding back into socialist driven thinking, and Cameron and all the rest, mostly without hardly an original idea in their heads (what on earth was May doing?) and an agenda increasingly driven by leftism.

Blair actually looks more Thatcherite than his Tory successors!

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
16 days ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

Margaret Thatcher did a lot of damage. She was exceptionally intelligent but did not realise that. Consequently she assumed that others from a similarly modest background who were not high achievers were simply not trying hard enough. She did not recognise that a difference in intelligence (in terms of knowledge rather than wisdom) leads to different income prospects.
This also means that many people will not earn enough to buy a house. Possibly her biggest failure was to not replace the social housing she sold.
(I too am curious to know where you would emigrate!)

Nathan Sapio
Nathan Sapio
16 days ago
Reply to  Judy Johnson

Just to recap: you think she was really smart despite caricatures, but not smart enough to see what you see which is that most people are really dumb. This recipe makes you seem smart and leaves her back in the original caricature of not very smart. Was that the goal?

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
10 days ago
Reply to  Nathan Sapio

I don’t think most people are dumb at all. I am simply saying that average iintelligence is less than hers was. If most people were dumb we would need the Margaret Thatchers of this world!

Tim Richards
Tim Richards
17 days ago
Reply to  Tony Price

It would be hard to consider the last 14 years of Tory Government anything other than light socialism. The disincentive to work at the lower earnings level and the highest level ( tax and pension limits ) are contributing to less economically active people. Doctors are no longer incentivised by the vocational aspect but rather the ability to earn enough by working part time. The UK is busy and the rot started with Blair and Brown

Christopher Barry
Christopher Barry
17 days ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

I’m curious which country you’d emigrate to?

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
16 days ago

Most east European countries are not doing too badly and Italy looks promising. New Zealand is ok, Australia I think will sort itself out. And the USA is going to have a bad four years, but I think the medium term outlook is good. The Americans are still enterprising, hard-working, and decent people in general.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
13 days ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

I think Australia is the place to go.

David Holmes
David Holmes
12 days ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

I’m not so sure. I’ve visited there many times and find the rules becoming increasingly draconian. For instance, the price of alcohol is way more than many other countries (Australian wine is often cheaper in the UK than Australia – work that one out) and smoking prohibitive (fortunately, I don’t smoke). Moreover, I thought their Covid response was almost Nazi – Melbourne had one of the strictest lockdowns anywhere. Even now their parliamentarians continue to deny evidence (and state misinformation) and strive to deny free speech. Twenty years ago it may have been the place to go, now I am definitely sure it isn’t – except for a short holiday perhaps – even then I can be persuaded to go somewhere more welcoming)

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
5 days ago
Reply to  David Holmes

You are spot on. We have this image of Australia as this swashbuckling country. But the government there is increasingly authoritarian.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
13 days ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

To Australia.

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
17 days ago

I think the baroque facades pre-date al Fayed.

Francisco Menezes
Francisco Menezes
17 days ago

150 years after Troloppe’s ‘The Way We Live Now’ was published people are amazed there is another Augustus Melmotte in their midst? Come on. Nothing new under the sun. Of course, pretty girls behind the counter. Men like to watch pretty girls and their wallets emptied in the silly belief that she loves him. That is where I stopped as the acidic resentment in this article became a bit too much for me.’Gorgeously decorated interiors’ sounds very uranian, by the way.

Nathan Sapio
Nathan Sapio
16 days ago

Wasn’t sure if that was a typo or an allusion or what at the end there. Surprisingly after all it’s either a euphemism or slur. Thanks for giving a language lesson.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
17 days ago

Tiny Rowland was unacceptable to the British Establishment of the time, but was clearly correct about al Fayed in his book The Hero from Zero.