Luxury Briefing.

THERE was good modern furniture and quality carpet and a hum of con?dent optimism. The men were in proper suits and the women had a celebrity allure. We drank superb South American wines and the sunshine beat down. The water glistened enticingly and in the distance there were blue-purple mountains. A shockingly huge, coruscatingly white cruise liner was in the docks. Only glistening a little less than the river were all the late-model German cars parked below.

Altogether, it was like a Hollywood fantasy of an architect’s life. I propped myself against a ?ling cabinet and spoke to a sleek chairman type, all tan and teeth, big silk tie, a mane of gunmetal hair and shoes with the kind of polish you only get if you are a soldier or have someone to polish them for you. He, it turned-out, ran a huge property corporation, responsible for some of the region’s most awe-inspiring buildings. So where was I? Santa Monica? Rio? Bombay? Shanghai ? No, actually, I was in Liverpool.

I was born in Wales and have lived most of my life in London, but happened to go to school in Liverpool. And Scouse sentimentality is infectious so, irrespective of the facts, I regard Merseyside as home. I mention this only because when I was growing up there, just to say the word ‘Liverpool’ was to evoke a universe of dismay and vileness and crime and poverty. The big threat when I was a boy was of getting nutted by a truculent drunken mick or accosted by shoeless beggarwomen or breaking your neck after sliding on a pool of indigent’s vomit. Today the big threat is getting your RS6 or C63 ticketed.

No one ever told me that Liverpool has a future. I was brought up to believe that it only had a past and that it was soon going to be reforested, de-populated and returned to Nature in a humbling
gesture acknowledging the futility of man’s ambitions and vanities. There’s still a lot of vomit and vileness around, but in the past ten years Liverpool has escaped an urban near-death experience and is, if not quite as con?dently and stylishly as Florence circa 1430, busy having its own renaissance.

This homily about my schooldays is not merely more indulgent autobiography, but a lesson to luxury businesses. My chums – the ?acks, hacks, boosters, scribblers, posers, sketchers, ?xers – who inhabit the cosmopolis do not know Liverpool (or, say, Manchester, Chester, Newcastle) exist. They ignore anywhere that is not London. But here in the north-west are vigorous markets stif?y populated by people with money to spend. And since property prices are generally much lower than the south-east, the money they have to spend is stored in much larger and more attractive piles.

Liverpool now has one of the largest shopping malls in Europe, all crisp new-build by serious architects in the pay of the Duke of Westminster. On any night, the passeggiata on the Ropewalks make via Condotti look like a quiet moment in the cloisters of the Discalced Carmelites. But Liverpool and other northern cities need better specialist goods and services.

The market is wide open and real. My old city of waifs and beggars and drunks is disappearing, replaced by women in Dior who talk to BlackBerrys. Liverpool also has one of the largest student populations in Europe with a specially high proportion of Chinese: there’s a special relationship here since Liverpool had the ?rst Chinatown. What’s the least-exploited brand on the planet, a product that commands worldwide respect, but is pitiably under-valued? Liverpool Football Club. Just a thought. Does anybody think they might be missing something?

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