London: A Magpie's Paradise
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By Fiona Sinclair Scott and Leah Dolan
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Welcome to Big Style, a portal to a world where clothing meets culture. Roll up, roll up! It’s London Fashion Week. This weekend’s newsletter is co-authored by CNN Style’s London locals: Fiona Sinclair Scott and Leah Dolan. Blimey!
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Mentioned in this issue: London Fashion Week, artistic shoppers, village life in a big city, Burberry trench coats, McQueen, Glitterati, Oscar Wilde’s favorite shop, Christopher Kane’s Mulberry debut, drama-free museum fashion exhibitions.
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Shopping in this Tudor-era department store is basically a cultural prerequisite of visiting London.
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Experienced Londoners know that the best way to enjoy the city is to think about it as a collection of villages, and the best thing about village life in London is each one has its own special shopping street.
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Not the much-maligned British High Street (those long drags of filthy pharmacies, betting shops, chain cafes and shuttered banks that desperately need saving), but the charming communities of stores with their wood-paneled fronts, hand-painted signs and engaged shopkeepers who make buying stuff a delight — rather than a headache-inducing online nightmare.
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London’s unruly, polycentric design has bred a magpie’s paradise. On Pimlico Road, where JW Anderson opened its second shop earlier in the year, there are a bounty of design businesses to peruse handprinted wallpaper (from inside Flora Soames gorgeous slither of a shop) or pick up a 19th-century tea caddy, decorated with regency wax seals (from Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler). On Columbia Road, a row of Victorian shops includes Glitterati, a scruffy purveyor of antique European glassware. On Lamb’s Conduit Street, Lesley will sell you one-of-a-kind jewelry at Talisman Gallery. These are the streets where an heirloom tomato or a fillet of fish can be bought with the same care and earnestness as a designer bag.
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Ring the bell for good luck and enter a meeting house filled with charm, community, and curiosities. At 84 Teesdale Street in East London, the Chopova Lowena Clubhouse is the brand's first-ever owned and operated retail space.
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Because it is literally all over the place, London’s shopping culture is hard to define. The city is home to the oldest department store in the world, Fortnum & Mason, and also to Liberty, a creaky-floored Tudor palace of fashion and textiles that Oscar Wilde called the “chosen resort of the artistic shopper.” (How chic is that?) But it’s also the town that birthed Vivienne Westwood’s anarchic Worlds End and, more recently, indie label Chopova Lowena’s first brick and mortar spot in Hackney, which its designers say is more of a ‘clubhouse’ than a ye olde shoppe (although it’s definitely the place to try on their jingle-jangle carabiner kilts). London’s fashion week schedule often reflects this spirit. Over the next few days, 170-year-old heritage brands are mixing with labels started a couple of years ago from someone’s squat. It’s fancy and it’s feral and that’s what makes it absolutely fabulous.
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Forget museums! Shopping in London is a cultural experience:
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- Jake Burt’s weekly Saturday pop-up store on Vyner Street sells one-of-a-kind, Frankenstein hybrid hoodies that clash patterns and textiles inside a classic zip-up silhouette. The one-day-on, six-days-off schedule keeps the vibe exclusive while giving people an IRL experience. It’s been so popular, Burt’s been popping over to Canal Street in New York to sell there.
- L Cornelissen & Son is an art supply store that’s been running for over 170 years.
- Nordic Poetry is an IRL archival shopping experience frequented by Charli XCX and Law Roach. Pose well during your try-on sesh and your polaroid might make it onto their acclaimed pink wall of fame, or here.
- Bat your eyes and tell the boss at Fin and Flounder on Broadway Market that you’re making a stew and he’ll give you a bag of fish heads and bones for free.
- Climax Books by former Dover Street Market shopgirl Isabella Burley opened this year in Clerkenwell. Her collection of archival magazines, photobooks, anthologies and generally niche ephemera span the erotic to the esoteric. You can pick up some merch, too. This, however, is sold out.
- Mahala in Crouch End makes clothes and bags in the front, and kilim rugs in the back.
- James Smith & Sons is a Victorian-era shop entirely devoted to umbrellas and parasols.
- La Fromagerie in Marylebone is the place to go for festive funk all year round.
- Lock & Co. Hatters call themselves the oldest hat shop in the world.
- There is nothing like Ümit and Son’s cinema shop filled with old tapes, memorabilia and a 15-seat cinema you can hire for private screenings.
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LONDON FASHION WEEK BITS & BOBS
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Petra Fagerström has already posed the question, What if we put our favorite dresses through the shredder?
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Sandwiched between New York and Milan, London’s fashion week officially began on Wednesday and wraps up Monday night. Here’s what we’re watching:
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- All eyes are on Mulberry by Christopher Kane. The Scottish designer, who shuttered his beloved namesake label in 2023, is making his debut as the creative director of the time-honored British brand on Sunday. At his own label, Kane had range. His clothes could be kinky, sculptural, twee or intellectual. He will no doubt have some fun turning this well-to-do English label on its head. Curious New York readers can pop into the Met to see some of Kane’s work, like this evening dress that doubles as an anatomical study of a human leg.
- If you’re looking for drama-free fashion exhibitions ahead of the Burberry show on Monday night, the V&A is honoring a fairly uncontroversial figure in the industry: the trench coat. Gabardine, wax, leather, canvas — every iteration of the outerwear staple is about as British as saveloy and chips.
- London’s homecoming (Mc)Queen! After more than 25 years, Alexander McQueen’s namesake label is back on the official LFW schedule with Seán McGirr at the helm (the brand did pop up to show in London in 2022 and 2023). It lends the event some much needed star power, which has for years been carried by the likes of Burberry, Erdem and Simone Rocha. Here’s hoping the collection will offer more than the inevitable misty-eyed nostalgia.
- Will a recently re-located, non-working royal pop into a show this weekend? We’ll be watching…
- Priya Ahluwalia on your walls! The fashion designer has collaborated with Calico on a series of original wallpapers.
- Debuts on our radar are Gui Rosa and 5000. London shows rarely have the same production value as Paris or Milan, but with the city being a great incubator of talent, the week always scores high on the weird and wonderful and new.
- For the last few seasons, Pauline Dujancourt’s witchy, whimsical knits have been gathering a cult following. Her new collection shown later this afternoon comes just in time for sweater weather.
- There were some fabulous hats at Petra Fagerström’s first London runway on Friday morning, perfect for the alt-Ascot attendee. Design nerds will be able to geek out on the collection’s impressive technical construction, particularly one leather dress slashed into hundreds of tiny strips.
- Paul Smith, the patron saint of Frazzled English Men, this week remade his studio inside Selfridge’s Corner Shop space. Like some kind of David Blaine performance art piece, Smith toiled away at his desk as usual — only this time he was also the department store’s window display. Smith, who this summer turned 80, even took ‘office hours’ from fans.
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