Pick and choose your Jimmy Choos

I still think Nottingham is a great shopping city. But how shall I put it? It isn’t getting any greater.
Having headed south for a few days last week, I’m not sure there’s a lot we can do about it either.
We can’t ignore the advances made in Derby and Leicester because they are advances. But it isn’t chance that determines the quality of the shops in a city, or the passage of time – it’s the catchment.
Last week I wandered around a designer outlet centre in Oxfordshire. At first glance it gave off all the same vibes as McArthur Glen at South Normanton – a car park from hell leading into rows of not very artfully pitched roofs.
But that was where the similarities ended. Where McArthur Glen has M&S, Next, all the other usual suspects and a food court full of hot and cold running kids, Bicester Village has Mulberry, Jimmy Choo, Versace, Dunhill, Gieves & Hawkes, and its own branch of restaurant chain Carluccio’s.
In other words it IS a designer outlet, not merely an out-of-town disposal point for last season’s High Street staples.
It clearly has the money to support it, too, judging by the bloated BMWs and Range Rovers I squeezed my humble jalopy in between.
We’ve placed great store, if you’ll excuse the pun, in the revamping of Broadmarsh, as if that in itself will vault Nottingham on to a new level of retail greatness.
I don’t think it will. It will tidy up a dog-eared end of the city centre, sure, but unless it breaks new ground as a retail concept or brings in a new big name in retailing it provides no new reason to come here.
My colleague Mhairi McFarlane made the point this week that we have been losing one of our Unique Selling Points by failing to appreciate the contribution of quirky, talented independents and allowing diverse locations to become bland and characterless.
Which brings me back to the point about catchment. Nottingham isn’t rural Oxfordshire, a long-term dormitory for the burgeoning wealth of London and the M4 corridor.
But the city’s catchment isn’t short of a few quid. The city has its wealthy pockets, and there are villages and suburbs across Notts full of people with the money and sophistication to appreciate West End names. Throw in the monied hinterland of the county’s borders with Lincolnshire and Leicestershire and you realise that we’re not quite the south’s poor relation after all.
What it sometimes takes to make big things happen is nothing more than brass neck. Leeds has it, so does Manchester. If it fancies a pair of Jimmy Choos rather than pale Primark imitations Nottingham had better get it soon.