Philip Day: the retail knight falls off his horse

Retail baron Philip Day, once seen as the saviour of the British high street, is under fire for holding to a monastic silence as his suppliers struggle due to coronavirus.

In recent years, the billionaire proprietor of Edinburgh Woollen Mill, Philip Day, has basked in the glow of a burgeoning reputation as a saviour of the British high street. “The opposite” of the sector’s stereotypical “brash entrepreneur”, Day is “quietly showing his retail rivals the way”, said The Guardian in 2018. Having quietly built a 1,113-store powerhouse from formerly stricken fashion chains such as Jaeger, Austin Reed, Peacocks and Bonmarché, his star is in the ascendant even as the curtain falls on Sir Philip Green’s troubled Arcadia empire. “As one billionaire Philip fades into the background another is hoving into view.”

From council estate to castle

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.