In the decaying, damp-rot theater of the British High Street, we are once again treated to the spectacle of corporate necrophilia masquerading as a 'rescue.' Next, the retail industry’s equivalent of a vacuum cleaner that has gained sentience and a hunger for distressed assets, has swooped in to 'save' Russell & Bromley. By save, of course, I mean they have performed a clinical extraction of the brand’s remaining dignity for the pittance of £3.8 million, leaving approximately 400 human beings to contemplate the structural integrity of the social safety net from the wrong side of a locked shop door. It is a masterful display of the modern economic ritual: preserve the logo, liquidate the lives, and ensure that the residents of Mayfair don’t have to walk too far for their Italian loafers while the rest of the country continues its slow slide into a post-industrial abyss.

Russell & Bromley, founded in 1879 in Eastbourne, has managed to survive two World Wars, several pandemics, and the invention of the Croc, only to be dismantled in the era of 'strategic consolidation.' For 145 years, the brand catered to the sort of person who believes that footwear is a personality trait. But in the cold, unfeeling ledger of 2024, history is merely a marketing footnote. The 'deal'—a word that does heavy lifting in the boardrooms of the bored—sees Next acquiring the brand and three measly stores. Three. Out of more than forty locations across the UK and Ireland, only Chelsea, Mayfair, and the Bluewater shopping center have been deemed worthy of continued existence. It is a perfect microcosm of the modern world: if you aren't spending your weekend sipping overpriced lattes in London’s wealthiest enclaves or wandering the climate-controlled purgatory of a mega-mall, you simply do not exist to the masters of capital.

The math of this transaction is as chilling as it is predictable. At £3.8 million for the entire brand, Next has essentially purchased a century and a half of heritage for the price of a modest terrace house in the very neighborhoods it is 'saving.' Meanwhile, 400 employees are being tossed into the bin like a pair of scuffed heels. If we divide the purchase price by the number of jobs lost, we find that each human being's livelihood was valued at less than £10,000. It is a bargain-basement price for a massacre. But don't expect the suits in Leicester to lose any sleep over it. They are too busy adding Russell & Bromley to their ever-growing pile of corporate corpses, alongside the remains of FatFace, Made.com, and Cath Kidston. Next is no longer a clothing retailer; it is a hospice for brands that forgot to die when the internet was invented.

There is a profound, almost poetic irony in the fact that a company built on shoes is leaving so many people without a leg to stand on. The 33 shops not included in the deal will shutter, leaving more holes in the already moth-eaten fabric of British town centers. We are told this is the 'evolution' of retail, but evolution usually implies progress. This is merely decomposition. We are witnessing the final stages of a consumerist society that has run out of ideas, where the only way to generate 'growth' is to cannibalize the past and strip it of its overhead. The Left will surely wring their hands and demand a 'windfall tax' on shoelaces, while the Right will drone on about the 'invisible hand' of the market—an invisible hand that, in this case, seems mostly occupied with reaching into the pockets of the unemployed.

The reality is far more tedious. We have built an economy where the only thing of value is the 'intellectual property'—the name on the box—while the actual humans who sell the product, the communities that host the stores, and the history that built the brand are considered 'liabilities' to be shed. The 48 staff members who survived the cull in Chelsea and Mayfair should not feel lucky; they are merely the last few musicians on the Titanic, instructed to keep playing while the iceberg of e-commerce finishes its work. We are all just waiting for the day when the entire world is just one giant Next warehouse, shipping mediocre goods to people who have no jobs left to pay for them. Until then, at least the bankers in Mayfair can buy their brogues in person. The rest of us can just walk barefoot into the sunset.