The more Ab Fab became famous, the more we did

TV star and business guru Mary Portas tells HANNAH STEPHENSON about putting ‘Harvey Nicks’ on the shopping radar and her different vision for retail

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WHEN Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley descended on Harvey Nichols out of hours to film the first Absolutely Fabulous in the early 90s, Mary Portas, the store’s creative director who had arranged the TV setting, knew she was taking a huge risk.

Her decision could go either way. She could get free marketing for the store through the new BBC show, attracting masses of curious customers, or it could become the unfortunate butt of every fashion-induced joke - not cool.

“I really didn’t sleep. I just had this feeling they were going to put a store in as the store you go to. I knew they were dropping names of designers. I thought, if they name drop a store I want it to be ours. I couldn't bear the thought it could be another one.

“The risk was it could have been a send up, a laugh at, and because I was unable to see the script, quite rightly, I did take that responsibility.”

She needn't have worried. Within weeks of Ab Fab airing in 1992, Harvey Nicks was teeming with mothers and their teenage daughters eager to see what all the glorious fuss was about.

“Ab Fab then went global, so you had all the international people wanting to see the store that they went to. A lot of international money suddenly came in, but it brought the younger market in as well and they became lifers because it was just joyous. And the more that Ab Fab became famous, the more we did.”

Harvey Nicks became a character itself and helped Mary and her team take it from faded to high fashion in five years.

“You have those times in your life, those turning points,’ says the retail guru, author, TV star and marketer, who charts her career in the mad materialistic world of the 90s in her new memoir, I Shop, Therefore I Am. Mary, 65, says she already has nine production companies pitching for the rights to a TV adaptation, plus a scriptwriter in place.