When Harvey Nichols, that totem of Knightsbridge and Ab Fab, opened a satellite in Leeds 12 years ago, the London-based media viewed the venture with the same shock and awe that the reader feels when Marlow embarks on his journey up the Congo River in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Leeds! Imagine. A place where everyone wore cloth caps and no one had ever seen salmon carpaccio. Even the Harvey Nichols management wobbled when they discovered that a three-course meal could be had in a local boutique hotel for £9.99 while Leeds' Harvey Nichols planned to charge £14 for a single plate of seared tuna.

How mankind evolves. Liverpool got Coleen. Manchester got Posh. Emmerdale got Botox and Patsy Kensit. A decade on, Harvey Nichols Leeds is the brand's most profitable store per square foot outside London (there are now 12, including branches in Edinburgh, Birmingham and Riyadh). The opening of a Caffè Nero on a formerly tatty high street demonstrates progress up the property food chain but the arrival of a Harvey Nicks outpost signifies that an entire city has been gentrified.

And now Harvey Nichols is coming to Bristol, which is very exciting because the last time I looked (20 years ago, admittedly), Dingles and polystyrene ceiling tiles were as sophisticated as retail experiences got in Bristol, which is not really on for such a lovely city.

I know that there will be some readers who earnestly deplore this modern barometer of a city's standing. In the old days it was cathedrals and universities that marked the prestige of aspiring metropolises. Compared with dreaming spires and world-renowned choirs, a store offering limited-edition Louboutins and a Blink eyebrow bar might seem trivial, I grant you. If you were in the mood for a fight, you could argue that shipping in McQueen, Balenciaga, Phillip Lim and Jimmy Choo to natives who previously haven't been exposed to temptation, is akin to the conquistadors breezing into the New World on ships laden with smallpox.

But, if you'll forgive me, that's a very trivial view.

At their best, department stores have always been seminaries of taste - not just in clothes or food but in decor. In the early 1830s, when the first department stores began to sprout in Britain, France and the US - the outcome of increased productivity and huge demographic shifts from the country to the town - department stores were wondrous temples of previously unimagined consumer delights and spectacles (one store flooded its basement to “recreate” Venice for one of its promotions). Luxurious, cutting-edge, with their plate-glass windows and electricity, the stores were also refuges, where single women could safely meet one another without the dreaded chaperone.

The Luftwaffe, combined with that peculiar strain of British puritanism, put paid to many of these grand emporia with their lofty ideals about commerce.

While many continental provincial towns and cities that survived the attention of German and, admittedly, British ordnance maintained civilised - and, arguably, civilising - shopping districts, the centres of scores of British towns descended into bleak, windblown eyesores. Where there are no decent shops, few restaurants, cafés, hairdressers, gyms, grocers, libraries - or any of the other services that make life pleasant - survive.

It's understandable that in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, shops and houses were thrown up as quickly and cheaply as possible. It's also conceivable that the entire country suffered a form of post-traumatic stress that catastrophically affected its aesthetic appreciation.

But it borders on the dysfunctional that a nation that produced the glorious crescents of Bath or Buxton could also put up with the brutal shopping precincts scarring scores of jewels, including Oxford and Cambridge, Exeter, Plymouth, Cardiff and Coventry, for 60 years. Maybe the problem is that, like that peeling paint in the hall, you stop noticing the ugliness after a while. Or you simply avoid it. In the end, horizons narrow or people leave, which is why a town such as Bournemouth, with some of the most expensive property in the world, has such lacklustre shops and restaurants (sorry, Bournemouthians, you have lovely beaches, but dire places in which to spend your hard-earned money). Anyone with the time and money shops elsewhere. It's not exactly ecological or democratic.

Patrick Hanley, commercial director of Harvey Nichols, who is always on the lookout for new locations, calls such places “forgotten towns”. Until now, Bristol was ranked seventeenth on a list of the nation's retail destinations - a striking mismatch with its size and diversity, and not good for trade or the self-esteem of the city centre.

Leeds got it together only because of an all too rare breed in Britain - the enlightened retail landlord. When Harvey Nichols originally looked at its Leeds site, the developers were struggling to attract tenants. A former theatre that had burnt down, it looked across to a pound shop. The developers offered it to Harvey Nichols for a peppercorn rent, gambling that such an upscale name would attract others. The risk paid off.

With all this in mind, last week I trotted off to the Bristol Harvey Nicks before it opens. The skilful way in which Christian Biecher, the Parisian architect, has made its compact 35,000sqft over three floors seem spacious and light - with white, mother of pearl walls, “floating” metal lace partitions, gold columns and plush changing rooms - is an eloquent reminder that since shopping in the 21st century is embedded in leisure and social interaction, the experience might as well be refined and pleasurable.

There will be a world-class restaurant, courtesy of Louise McCrimmon, a former sous-chef at the Leeds branch, with pumpkin veloutés and butternut pastilles. In fact, Bristol's food scene is already far more diverse than its fashion one - a reflection of its hugely diverse 3.6million catchment area. It can do slow food and organic food. It's been there and done trip-hop. Is it ready for Jo Malone? What do you think?

Harvey Nichols Bristol opens on September 24 at Cabot Circus, Bristol (0117-916 8888)

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