Like many others, 87-year-old Janet came to ‘say goodbye’ to the Australian institution that is David Jones

Like many others, 87-year-old Janet came to ‘say goodbye’ to the Australian institution that is David Jones As Australia’s oldest department store goes into administration, shoppers mourn its demise amid an uncertain future

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When Janet Morice thinks of David Jones , she thinks back to postwar Melbourne in 1946, when she would visit the store as a child.

“I would put on my best clothes, my mother would put on her hat and gloves, and we would go to afternoon tea at the department store,” she says.

Peering through the Christmas displays at the Elizabeth Street store in Sydney’s CBD, the 87-year-old says it is “really, really sad” to think the country’s oldest department store could close.

Metres away, on the ground floor of the flagship store, some shelves sit empty, cleared of their designer accessories within hours of David Jones going into administration on Thursday morning.

“My partner has just said to me ‘Let’s go and say goodbye, because today it’s closing.’ And it’s heartbreaking.”

While David Jones is not shutting immediately, the future of the 188-year-old retailer is highly uncertain, and some underperforming stores are expected to be closed imminently .

The company had fallen behind on rent, culminating in a breakdown of negotiations with its primary landlord, Westfield owner Scentre Group.

The upheaval follows years of steep losses and underperforming stores that left the retailer vulnerable, only for conditions to deteriorate further as high interest rates and cost-of-living pressures led to a pullback in customer spending.

Morice’s partner, Andrew Starr, has shopped at David Jones for more than 40 years. While he says the news is sad, he believes he mourned the department store a long time ago – and feels it “lost its identity” years ago.

“They lost their legacy when they started doing everything up,” he says. “What’s the point of coming into David Jones when you’ve got Chanel and Versace and things like that all the way through it? They had their own brands for a while, and they were good, solid, dependable clothes. Now they’ve sacrificed all that.”

While business appears to be operating as normal on several floors on Thursday afternoon, a few outlets have already stripped their shelves bare.

Employees at a couple of the empty stands tell Guardian Australia they have received orders to shut up shop, with no further details about what will happen to the store or to them.