Given these attempts to reposition their brand, there could hardly have been a more appropriate time to sell the private collection of one of the legendary names of British retailing.
The introduction to the catalogue of the February 24, King Street sale described Lord Halpern as "well-known in the business and financial world as the former chairman and CEO who successfully transformed the Burton Group that owned at the time Harvey Nichols, Debenhams and a variety of 2000 chain stores".
Back when Lord Halpern was still Sir Ralph, he was even better known to the tabloid press in the late 1980s as the millionaire businessman who could make love to his numerous girlfriends five times a night but Christie's chose not to make capital of this.
Sir Ralph's ability to reward himself was also legendary.
He and his boardroom colleagues pioneered the three- and five-year rolling contracts that are now outlawed and when he was finally ousted from the Burton board in 1990 he was given a £2m pay-off and a pension of £465,000 a year.
When in his pentatumescent pomp in the 1980s, Sir Ralph spent some sizeable amounts of money in the salerooms and with the trade in order to decorate his houses in Chelsea and Surrey in the prevailing traditional English style.
The resultant collection had now been consigned in its entirety to Christie's, following Lord and Lady Halpern's decision to leave the UK and live in South America.
Lord Halpern's taste in interior decoration, in which gold-framed, traditional oil paintings, mahogany furniture and Colefax & Fowler chintz were the dominant themes, now looks a little dated.
But, thanks to the depth of Christie's private client list, buyers were found for all but 13 of the 199 lots and the final premium-inclusive total of £738,288 wasn't far short of the £800,000 pre-sale upper estimate.
Whether Lord Halpern made a profit on his original investment is rather more difficult to gauge, but there was an awful lot of brown furniture bought from Surrey and London antique dealers selling for low four-figure prices that had a distinct late 1980s feel to them.
Predictably, and perhaps appropriately, private individuals dominated the buying with the top six prices all taken by privately-purchased paintings.
The pick of these was undoubtedly a large and impressive signed John Thomas Serres (1759-1825) canvas of local fishing boats and British men of war off the Belém Tower, Lisbon, which led the sale at £70,000 against an estimate of £40,000-60,000. Bought by Sir Ralph from Lane Fine Art in November 1986, and featuring a highly decorative neoclassical frame that may well have been original, this relined, but well-preserved, 5ft by 6ft 8in (1.52 x 2.03m) canvas is documented as having been originally shown at the inaugural exhibition at the British Institution in 1806.
Lane Fine Art would appear to have acquired the painting at Sotheby's in November 1985 for £23,000 plus buyer's premium.
