I walk through what I think is the main door of Frasers, although there are several along Buchanan Street, and enter the makeup department.

Electric Chapel by Lady GaGa is pulsing through the speakers. A twenty-something sales associate is speaking to two customers from behind a perfume desk. The grand five-storey galleried atrium rises behind him, illuminated with cold autumn sunlight from the glass roof.

Formerly House of Fraser, the bones of the Category A-listed department store could have been written into existence by Émile Zola himself: the cast-iron columns, ornate plasterwork and mahogany staircases were designed in the Victorian era to dazzle shoppers with light and spectacle.

The threadbare green carpet on the staircase has faded to the shade of lichen from so many soles tramping over it. Up I go, skipping the designer men’s clothes on the first floor and straight to the second. I already feel jarred. The fluorescent lights above seem to have been installed at random, alternating between panels and pot lights. Some flicker, others have burnt out. The working ones cast a jaundiced light over the £300 Barbour jackets and racks of designer clothes. Underfoot is a spectacular pastiche of department store flooring - a mosaic of wood laminate and vinyl tiles.

I flick through a few racks of clearance summer clothes before stumbling across the first of many abandoned sales floors. A small sign does a weak job of separating the former retail floor from the main store. Empty black rolling racks, a rolled-up carpet and long-abandoned displays are scattered within.

I pass another sales associate who explains the store has been unwinding slowly for years, with parts of the building closed off and the remaining merchandise drawn inward towards the atrium. They don’t have the staff or stock to fill the entire store just now, she says.

Frasers still advertises beauty treatments, personal shopping, a Caffe Nero and other........

© Herald Scotland