Mirror Mirror, Kenmore (1979 – 2026)

By our Shop Obituaries Correspondent

Mirror Mirror, which sold mirrors, compacts, shaving glasses and a large ornamental looking-glass that nobody ever bought, has closed after 47 years in Kenmore.

Its owners blamed the weather. “On a calm day, Loch Tay is the best mirror in Scotland,” said a family member. “People just walk down to the shore and check their hair. It’s free. It’s huge. It shows you the hills behind you. We can’t compete.”

The shop was a Kenmore institution. Visitors would come in to look at themselves in the large gilded mirror at the back, comment on how tired they looked, and leave without buying anything. Locals called it “the most honest shop in Perthshire”.

Its finest hour came in 1988, when a well-known actor stopped in Kenmore and spent 20 minutes in the shop looking at himself in the gilded mirror. Staff were thrilled. He left without buying anything. “He was very pleasant,” the owner said at the time. “He just seemed to really like the mirror.”

In recent years, the shop suffered from the rise of phone cameras, which allowed people to look at themselves anywhere. “Everybody’s got a mirror in their pocket now,” said the owner. “And they’re all looking in it. We were just ahead of our time.”

Mirror Mirror is survived by its large gilded looking-glass, which is still for sale, and which has been described by everybody who has ever stood in front of it as “very flattering, actually”.

The real story: Perth forecast (Met Office)