Harrods is an upmarket department store located in Brompton Road in Knightsbridge, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London.

The Harrods brand also applies to other enterprises undertaken by the Harrods group of companies including Harrods Bank, Harrods Estates, Harrods Aviation and Air Harrods, and to Harrods Buenos Aires, sold by Harrods in 1922 and closed as of 2011, with plans announced to reopen in 2013. The Harrods motto is Omnia Omnibus UbiqueAll Things for All People, Everywhere. Several of its departments, including the seasonal Christmas department and the Food Hall, are world famous. Harrods founder Charles Henry Harrod first established his business in 1824, aged 25. The business was located south of the River Thames in Southwark. The premises were located at 228 Borough High Street. He ran this business, variously listed as a draper, mercer and a haberdasher, certainly until 1831. During 1825 the business was listed as 'Harrod and Wicking, Linen Drapers, Retail', but this partnership was dissolved at the end of that year. His first grocery business appears to be as Harrod & Co.Grocers at 163 Upper Whitecross Street, Clerkenwell, E.C.1., in 1832. In 1834 in London's East End, he established a wholesale grocery in Stepney, at 4, Cable Street, with a special interest in tea. In 1849, to escape the vice of the inner city and to capitalise on trade to the Great Exhibitionof 1851 in nearby Hyde Park, Harrod took over a small shop in the district of Brompton, on the site of the current store. Beginning in a single room employing two assistants and a messenger boy, Harrod's son Charles Digby Harrod built the business into a thriving retail operation selling medicines, perfumes, stationery, fruit and vegetables. Harrods rapidly expanded, acquired the adjoining buildings, and employed one hundred people by 1880. However, the store's booming fortunes were reversed in early December 1883, when it burnt to the ground. Remarkably, in view of this calamity, Charles Harrod fulfilled all of his commitments to his customers to make Christmas deliveries that yearand made a record profit in the process. In short order, a new building was built on the same site, and soon Harrods extended credit for the first time to its best customers, among them Oscar Wilde,Lillie Langtry, Ellen Terry, Charlie Chaplin, Nol Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Sigmund Freud, A. A. Milne, and many members of the British Royal Family. On Wednesday, 16 November 1898, Harrods debuted England's first "moving staircase" (escalator) in their Brompton Road stores; the device was actually a woven leather conveyor belt-like unit with a mahogany and "silver plate-glass" balustrade. Nervous customers were offered brandy at the top to revive them after their 'ordeal'. The department store was purchased by the Fayed brothers in 1985. Harrods was the holder of royal warrants from: Queen Elizabeth II for Provisions and Household Goods

The Duke of Edinburgh as Outfitters

The Prince of Wales as Outfitters and Saddlers

The Queen Mother, now deceased, for China and Glass

In August 2010, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph, Al-Fayed revealed that he had burnt Harrods royal warrants, after taking them down in 2000. Harrods had held the Royal warrants since 1910. Describing the warrants as a "curse", Al-Fayed claimed that business had tripled since their removal. The Duke of Edinburgh removed his warrant in January 2000, the other warrants were removed from Harrods by AlFayed in December, pending their five yearly review. The Duke of Edinburgh had been banned from \ Harrods by Al-Fayed. Film of the burning of the warrants in 2009 was shown in the final scene of Unlawful Killing a film funded by Al-Fayed and directed by Keith Allen. From 1989 Harrods has had a dress code policy and had turned away several people who it believed were not dressed appropriately. These included a soldier in uniform, a scout troop, a woman with a mohican hair cut, a 15 stone (95 kg) womanand FC Shakhtar Donetsk's first team for wearing tracksuits. This however, is no longer the case, and most outfits and dress-styles will be allowed within the store, though security staff still retain the right to refuse entry without giving an explanation as to why. Harrods still has a strict and accepted dress code, where people are refused and not allowed to enter the store if they are wearing high-cut, Bermuda or beach shorts, swimwear, athletic singlets, cycling shorts, flip flops or thong sandals, if they have bare midriff or bare feet, if they are excessively sweaty, or if they are wearing dirty or unkempt clothing.

Criticism
Harrods and Al-Fayed have been criticised for selling real animal fur with regular protests organised outside Harrods. Harrods is the only department store in Britain that has continued to sell fur. Harrods was sharply criticised in 2004 by the Hindu community for marketing a line of feminine underwear (designed by Roberto Cavalli) which featured the images of South-Asian goddesses. The line was eventually withdrawn and formal apologies were made. Harrods has been criticised as "deeply sexist" for making female employees wear six kinds of makeup at all times without requiring this of male employees. Asma al-Assad, the wife of the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, used an alias to shop at Harrods despite economic sanctions imposed by the European Union that froze funds belonging to her and her husband.