Generally I have a loathing of the chain stores devouring London's quirkier corners — keep them in the malls and High Streets, I say.
But I am pleased to see TK Maxx opening for business among the collectors' book emporia and guitar shops of Charing Cross Road.
TK offloads the gear designers and department stores have been unable to sell at full price. And in doing so at astonishingly low prices (in stores that are more Barnardo's than Bond Street), it gives the public a glimpse of just how much the High Street marks up designer goods.
Sure, the Primarks and Matalans have for years been showing us it's possible to make and distribute wearable clobber for a few pounds apiece if you don't worry too much about the poor souls making it.
But TK Maxx teaches us that the big fashion houses of Britain, America and Italy clearly don't spend too much more knocking the stuff up themselves. It's just that they're fleecing the poor suckers who buy it.
Opponents of my rip-off theory of fashion pricing argue that, just as a loaf of bread baked at dawn is discounted by dusk, so a new line of frocks launched and endorsed by an A-List celeb deteriorates in appeal as the longer it stays on the hanger. Fashion, like a wholegrain bloomer, goes stale with age and its value rightly falls.
But is this really true? Old bread you can't eat — three-month-old designer jeans you can still wear. There will always be those shoppers who insist on paying higher prices for the most up-to-date fashion. But as the economic crisis continues, surely more will be happy to wait a bit and pay less — bad news for the High Street mark-up merchants.
Perhaps that's why I like it so much. TK Maxx: the chain store-killing chain store.
