Harrods has a reputation problem. Not in the way that most brands mean when they talk about reputation — Harrods is, by any measure, one of the most recognised retail names on the planet. The problem is that somewhere along the way, it became a destination for everyone except the people it was originally built for.
On any given Saturday, the ground floor is a scrum of tourists photographing the perfume hall, selfie sticks aloft, shopping bags acquired as souvenirs rather than for what's inside them. It can feel, to the uninitiated, like a very expensive theme park. A simulacrum of luxury rather than the real thing.
But spend a bit more time, go a bit deeper, and a different Harrods emerges. One that genuinely rewards the serious shopper.
The Food Halls Are Still Extraordinary
Whatever your feelings about the rest of the building, the Harrods food halls remain one of the great retail experiences in Britain. The fish counter alone is a spectacle — whole turbot, live lobsters, cuts of fish you won't find anywhere else in the country, all presented with the kind of theatrical precision that makes buying a piece of salmon feel like an event.
The cheese room, the chocolate hall, the bakery, the extraordinary range of teas and preserves: these aren't tourist traps. They're genuinely exceptional, stocked with things you can't easily find elsewhere, served by people who actually know what they're talking about. Come for the atmosphere, leave with something worth eating.
The Buyers Still Have Taste
Harrods' fashion buying gets less credit than it deserves. Beneath the logo-heavy luxury brands jostling for prime real estate on the ground floor, there are quieter floors where the buying is genuinely adventurous. Emerging British designers sit alongside established European houses. There are pieces here that haven't made it into any other UK stockist, chosen because someone at Harrods believed in them.
The same is true of the home department. It's easy to walk past the obvious — the crystal, the gold-plated everything — and miss the genuinely well-edited shelves of tableware, textiles and objects that would look at home in any considered interior.
The Things Harrods Does That No One Else Does
There are categories where Harrods is simply without peer in this country. Toy department: still one of the best in the world, and deeply unfashionable to admit that. The pet department, which sells things for animals that are more thoughtfully designed than most things sold for humans. The watch rooms, where you can handle timepieces you'll never own but absolutely should be allowed to look at.
And the customer service, when you find the right person, is exceptional. There are staff members at Harrods who have been there for decades, who know their department like a scholar knows their subject, and who will talk to you honestly about what's worth buying and what isn't.
The Harrods Worth Visiting
The trick with Harrods is to go with intention. Don't start at the entrance on Brompton Road and try to fight your way through. Go early, go to a specific floor, talk to someone who works there. Treat it less like a department store and more like a series of specialist shops that happen to share a postcode.
Approached that way, it stops being a tourist trap and starts being what it always was: an extraordinary accumulation of things, some of them genuinely wonderful, in one very large, very well-lit building in Knightsbridge.
That spirit of seeking out the genuinely good, rather than settling for the merely famous, is something we think about at Jolly and Goode. British retail, at its best, rewards the curious and the patient. Whether that's finding the right corner of Harrods or the right gift on our shelves — the effort is always worth it.
