David Jones

David Jones was founded in 1838 in Sydney by Welsh immigrant David Jones as a small drapery shop on George Street, before expanding through the 19th and 20th centuries to become Australia's defining luxury department store. The brand has been continuously operating from the same Sydney CBD address (now the iconic 11-floor Castlereagh Street flagship and the Elizabeth Street flagship) for over 185 years — making David Jones one of the oldest continuously-operating department-store brands in the world still using its founding name. The David Jones vocabulary settled around several distinguishing things: the iconic Sydney CBD flagship complex (the Castlereagh Street menswear flagship plus the Elizabeth Street womenswear flagship — connected by a private bridge across Market Street), a buyer-led brand list anchored to every major LVMH, Kering, Richemont, Chanel, and Hermès luxury house plus a particularly strong selection of Australian-designer brands (Zimmermann, Camilla and Marc, Aje, Bassike, plus the broader Australian-fashion-week emerging-designer programme), the iconic Sydney David Jones Christmas window-display programme (a defining Sydney cultural event since 1894), and the long-running David Jones Australian-domestic Food Hall. David Jones is owned by Anchorage Capital Partners (the Australian private-equity firm that acquired the brand in 2022 from Woolworths Holdings, the South African retail conglomerate that had previously owned the brand). The retailer operates approximately 45 stores across Australia and New Zealand, plus the David Jones e-commerce platform. The Sydney CBD flagship has been continuously one of the defining destinations of Australian luxury retail since the late 19th century, with the brand maintaining the historic role of Australia's defining luxury-department-store retailer.