MACE could be ACE

Leather Lane market, Farringdon, London

I've walked by this shop hundreds of times and never given it much thought. Sure, it has always evoked memories of my childhood and I'm sure that it will for you, if you are native to the UK or Ireland. MACE. Who hasn't shopped in one at some time or other? A rare reminder of a former staple of the high street. The 'ghost' type a poignant reminder of a busier and better time. A spectre of a long-gone member of the MACE family.

Watch any outside news broadcast on the high street from the 60s and 70s, or external shoots on a British sitcom of the same time, or big-screen extensions of the same or many films from the Carry-On canon, and you'll see a MACE. The candy-stripe awnings, facias, bags and unapologetic post-modern logos. I never really appreciated how forward it was back then. And then walking through Fitzrovia last week, I saw this horror...

Fitzrovia. Under the Telecoms Tower, London.

MACE outlets are all independent traders who on joining the 'family' buy their stock from the brand owner. They also have the pleasure of paying the same for brand and marketing support. Pay...for this! Are they mad? It's a disgrace. Most kids could produce something more alluring and appropriate.

In an age when people are keen to support local traders it seems to me that Palmer & Harvey have missed a trick. The MACE of yesteryear projected all of the values that are important to today's consumer. Not for the first or indeed last time the future should be informed by the past. A neat inversion indeed. A national chain which embodies small-scale high street shop principles.

Bring back the awnings; the bags; the 3-D lettering; the optical illusionist facias and leave the perspex in the factory.

I found this fantastic site, the creator of which has a very personal link to the MACE story. Check it out.