Defining moments interview series: Mary Portas

Another defining moment, she says, was “walking away from a corporate life – which was a very comfortable life, but increasingly devoid of creativity and meaning – and going it alone.”

She founded Portas, a retail consultancy and creative agency, with the belief that “understanding people – how we’re all living, feeling and changing – has always had a wonderful, sexy connection with business. It’s what truly creative business ideas thrive on”. Portas and her team now work with the likes of Louis Vuitton, Sainsbury's, Cult Beauty, and Mercedes.

Back then, she earned the nickname ‘The Queen of Shops’ and for a time was all over the TV as a retail makeover maven. She’s also written several books including Work Like A Woman and Rebuild – How To Thrive In The Kindness Economy, which describes her views on how to rebuild business for a better world.

Portas is candid about her role in the glorious materialism of the nineties. “I am a creative person who is really good at commerce. But the way we do that has to change. Consumerism is rapidly changing. We are all re-evaluating the way we want to live – and how we live is how we buy, and how we need to sell. There’s no space anymore for mediocre businesses just selling piles of stuff.”

The answer is what she calls the new ‘kindness economy’. “Capitalism with a conscience, fuelled and measured by kindness and inclusivity, is what she describes it as. This means businesses managing profit in light of people’s wellbeing and the planet. We’re seeing the floods, we’re seeing the fires, we’re seeing what’s happening across the world. So we have to create business that says, ‘OK, we’re still going to buy clothes, we’re not going to sit here naked, we’re still going to eat, we’re still going to want homes, but how do we do this and create businesses that look after our people and our planet as well as profit?’ It’s that simple. But like all simple things – bloody hard to get on and do.”

The fashion industry still has a long way to go, says Portas: “Anyone who says they’re fully sustainable yet is talking bullsh*t. There’s a lot of marketing polish masking what is broadly business as usual. The brave ones like Ganni are the ones who are unflinchingly honest about how far they have to go and how they’ll get there.”

It’s clear the high street is still a subject dear to Portas’s heart. We are, she says, in what the philosopher Gershom Scholem called ‘the plastic hours’, those moments when it is possible to make change, often after a crisis. “We have seen, undoubtedly, a return to people wanting their local high streets for functional reasons, there are people for whom a third of their week is going to be spent working from home,” she says. “But it goes beyond that, our need to feel grounded and connected as part of a community has never been greater. But what’s the government doing? It’s letting shops change to residential, because all they see is growth of online. Of course, online is going to grow exponentially because we’ve been LOCKED INSIDE FOR 18 MONTHS.”

In the end we need both physical and digital to thrive says Portas. “Done right, there’s magic in the blend – to meet people’s needs, solve problems creatively, to help us all live, buy and sell better.”

Things are changing and Portas is hopeful about the future: “We’re seeing global furniture companies looking at the resell market and how to give back to the community. We’re seeing fashion brands tell customers ‘don’t buy another coat, you don’t need one. Make do and mend.’”

She adds: “There will always be the ones who go for the quick buck and sell dresses on Black Friday for 10p. But believe you me, as soon as a competitor offers those same customers that value piece plus the values we’re all wanting to buy into, it won’t be business as usual anymore.”

First published on the FT.com and produced in partnership with the Financial Times Commercial department.