In a spangly new Chelsea arcade I bought my mother-in-law a bathrobe. It was one of those intimate boutiques of Parisian provenance where an immaculate, pinky-ringed gent takes an age to wrap your gift: tissue paper, glossy box, origami garment folding, paper orchid placed on top just so. It was unbearably poignant, brave almost, this prissy professionalism while all around his lovely linens were discounted half-price or less. He knew he wouldn't be here next year.

Across the mall an upmarket men's outfitter of the suits-you-sir variety had suddenly liquidated. Outside, the manager was busy removing shop fittings in lieu of the three months' salary he was still owed. Two more bijoux stores were packing up in the new year if the sales don't save them. Their silk ties, pot pourri, cashmere sweaters and Egyptian cottons couldn't find buyers even in the final weekend before Christmas.

No one will lament their passing as we might the behemoths slain by the recession. They're a joke, these gifte shoppes manned by the least academic of minor public-school alumni. Even entering one brings my husband out in hives: the intrusive “can I help you?”, the preciousness of their wares, the fragrant claustrophobia while you calculate how long you must feign interest before you can bolt for the door. Nothing they sell is necessary, certainly not any more.

And yet, I felt so sad for this dignified man, a purveyor of minor delights, soon to join the new ocean of unemployed British shopworkers.

At a Christmas market along the South Bank I walked with a friend - burdened with money miseries of her own - laughing at the unloved, unbought nonsense. One stall sold only wooden ties. It was clever carpentry, the way the pine pieces cantilevered in a semblance of cloth. Very well finished too. And there was a photograph of Jon Snow wearing one to present Channel 4 News. But how many people are wacky enough to don a wooden tie? Or buy one even as a joke? On what crazy optimism was this enterprise born? And yet the company must have sold enough to produce a website and catalogue, and rent a pitch beside the Thames.

Likewise, how did Whittard, now in administration, think it could expand from a tiny specialist Chelsea importing business into an empire of 100-odd shops upon the demand for fragrant teas? And not even the honest sustaining everyday brews but odd, overpriced, often disgusting novelty variants.

Now whimsy has died and quasi-luxury struggles to hold on. Perhaps it is no bad thing: all those scented candles we never lit, just re-gifted, the plastic novelties - for children, assembled by children - which didn't live to see Boxing Day, now languishing in discount bins. All this stuff choking our homes, having to be continuously kept at bay like bindweed by means of car-boot sales, storage solutions and that boom-time coinage, “decluttering”.

The high street is experiencing a Darwinistic culling of the half-cocked and second-rate: who cares if Zavvi is killed by a zillion Amazon one-clicks and the hilariously misnamed Officers Club ceases to trade in Scouse nightclub tat? But we should spare a prayer for the elegant failures, the crimpers of bright tissue paper, the retail butterflies about to be crushed on the economic wheel.

And then celebrate four recession casualties that no one will cry about:

1) Whole Foods Since they arrived in Britain 18 months ago with their enormo London flagship store and eye-popping prices - I spied £6 for a small piece of Parmesan rind! - the US organo-capitalists have reportedly failed to thrive. British foodies like to frequent specialist local butchers and patisseries, not a quasi-supermarket where American Whole Food overlords, talking into FBI-style wrist microphones, are employed to teach us backward Brits how to suck (barn-raised) eggs.

Indeed these days when I take my sons in to scavenge for free samples, I only ever come across Americans. US mommies with new babies like to gather in its soulless upstairs café as presumably no indigenous store can meet their extreme hygiene specifications.

2) Daisy & Tom It turns out that designer children's apparel was Nature's way of telling us we had too much money. And this store on Kings Road, London, which has just ceased trading, was the temple of the £200 dress destined to be outgrown in a year, emetic teddy bears and bespoke doll's house. It was also where my elder son, then a toddler, pushed over the child of a Premiership footballer.

The boom gave birth to the bling baby, as commerce surged into the nursery. At first it was fun to have slightly more stylish kiddy-gear. But quickly new parents felt they had already failed if their baby was not born to a sackful of designer outfits and a pram like an armoured assault vehicle. Meanwhile, bored “mum-treneurs” avoided returning, post-partum, to proper careers by inventing products for non-existent hazards and needs. Baby perfume, anyone?

3) The Hummer Originally the military vehicle celebrated for winning the Gulf War, whose first civilian owner was Arnold Schwarzenegger, the belligerent wheels of rappers and pimps, which never managed more than 16 miles to the gallon, is on the skids. These days even Arnie has a Prius. The beleaguered General Motors says it will either sell its Hummer division or simply scrap it altogether. In the movie Borat, when our Kazakh hero asks a US car dealer what make of vehicle will “attract a woman with shave down below” he receives the reply: “A Hummer”...

4) The Brazilian As cars, like aircraft carriers, go out of fashion, so the mysterious edict issued around the millennium that all female bodily hair must henceforth be removed has just been revoked. Which is truly a relief since even in scruff-pot Britain depilation was getting out of hand.

But in cash-strapped times the upkeep of a Brazilian landing strip is just too expensive, and over-grooming suddenly looks way too try-hard. Now, according to US fashionistas, pubic topiary has a Seventies retro vibe. What a saving in time and unnecessary pain that now a quick snip with nail scissors will suffice. Just as Obama finally enters the White House, it seems the bush is back.

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