What the commentators said

“Back in 2006, Sir Philip Green was riding high,” said Ashley Armstrong in The Times. Having completed a “whirlwind of deals between 1995 and 2002”, he sat atop a high street empire. He had made the fastest £1bn in British history, been knighted by Tony Blair and confounded critics by reviving tired brands like BHS, and turning Topshop into a fashion giant. His extravagance was legendary. At his lavish 50th birthday party, he’d dressed as Emperor Nero while staff served £35,000 worth of caviar from ice sculptures; Tom Jones provided the entertainment. A huge £1.2bn payout from Arcadia had gone, tax-free, into his wife’s Monaco bank account. Then came the fall, said Zoe Wood in The Observer. The sale and subsequent collapse of BHS in 2016 left his reputation in tatters: he was eventually shamed into covering some of the firm’s £571m pension deficit. Two years later, he was forced to deny allegations of sexual harassment, racism and bullying. He has laid low on his £100m yacht, Lionheart, ever since.

For those of us who grew up in the 2000s, Topshop was the ultimate “coming-of-age store”, said Sophie Gallagher in The Independent: “cool enough for me and reassuring enough for my mum”. We queued for hours to get our hands on its collaborations with the likes of Kate Moss; trips to Topshop became a “Saturday pilgrimage”. But, like other Arcadia brands, it didn’t move with the times, said Oliver Shah in The Sunday Times. He may be a master dealmaker, but Sir Philip is also a Luddite with a visceral hatred of technology and of “millennial smartphone culture”. In the past decade, his empire has been “ripped apart” by fast fashion websites like Asos and Boohoo. The competition is cut-throat, said Hugo Rifkind in The Times. Last week, the website Pretty Little Thing was selling a dress for just 8p. No high-street fashion store could compete on that basis, even if there were footfall outside. The demise of fashion giants like Debenhams and Arcadia is certainly worth mourning – but it hardly comes as a surprise.