For almost 200 years, members of London’s high society – queens, princes and princesses among them – have turned to Harrods for their designer clothes, handbags and jewellery, as well as high-end homeware and gourmet foods.
The luxury department store is known around the world for its famous clientele, its opulent Victorian interiors and its upmarket goods. But for decades, the expensive art deco facade hid a dark underbelly. Last year, the BBC revealed that Harrods’ former owner, Mohamed Al Fayed, an Egyptian billionaire who died aged 94 in 2023, allegedly abused, harassed and raped hundreds of young women and teenage girls who worked for him between the late 1970s and the 2010s.
Harrods, which Al Fayed bought in 1985 and sold to Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund for £1.5bn in 2010, responded with an apology to the victims, condemning “the actions of an individual who was intent on abusing his power wherever he operated”. In March this year, the company set up a compensation scheme “to provide survivors with a trauma-informed alternative to litigating against Harrods”. By July, it reported that more than 100 of the 200-plus alleged survivors had applied for redress.
