BOND STREET Colour group: green Purchase price: £320 Rent: £28 Length: 800m Borough:Westminster Postcode: W1
The penultimate street on the Monopoly board famously doesn't exist, even though it has a station named after it. It's also perhaps London's premier shopping street, the one where all the luxury brands hang out, a linear mecca towards which a certain class of international visitor gravitates. As if to make the point the street has new Christmas lights this year in the shape of giant bottles of Chanel Nº5, rather than those elegant swans everyone used to like, which'll be switched on this Thursday in the spirit of ostentatious consumption. I nipped down early while all the shops were shut, when it's a different beast altogether, and walked first New Bond Street and then Old Bond Street.
Bond Street (yes it was originally called that) has its origins in the 1720s. At the time the north side of Piccadilly was lined by grand mansions, the most magnificent of which was said to be Clarendon House until its owner fell from grace with bad debts and the new owner sold it for development. In its place came Dover Street, Albemarle Street and Bond Street, the latter named after Sir Thomas Bond who led the consortium. At the time these streets backed onto open fields which plainly didn't last, and before long the 'new' end of Bond Street stretched north as far as Oxford Street as a prime axis of smart development. It's only been upmarket since.
Both Bond Streets are one-way and I'll be walking in the same direction as the traffic. I'll also be 'brand-dropping' as I go, kicking off with Abercrombie & Fitch and Zara who have the corner shops at the Oxford Street end. Price tags will elevate somewhat as we progress. The first old-looking frontage belongs to Leonard Jay, Gentlemen's Outfitters, who've been holding a closing down sale since January due to their lease ending which is great news if you want a cut price tweed jacket or green gilet. Mannequins elsewhere tend to be dressed in more fashionable clobber in muted shades, indeed there'll be hundreds more of these before we're finished.
Mephisto are the first bunch of cobblers down the street, supposedly offering the World's Finest Footwear including £265 trainers and £345 boots. Shapero Rare Books have special treasures in their window including a leatherbound set of the complete works of HG Wells signed by the author. I thought the plaque outside number 97 might be because the East India Company was founded here, but no it's a company of the same name founded by a Mumbai entrepreneur to flog expensive tea and gold coins to beguiled global tourists. The frontage of Bonham's is ridiculously narrow but leads to a sprawling auction house beyond, these the former premises of Phillips Son & Neale with whom they merged in 2001. Stand outside and you are in fact directly above the platforms of the £680m Crossrail station which ducks beneath Bond Street but only surfaces to either side.
Ten years ago textile artist Lucy Sparrow filled a corner shop in Bethnal Green with hand-sewn tins of beans, packs of cereal and chocolate bars with everything available for purchase, and it was so brilliant I invested in a Double Decker. This autumn she's upped her game somewhat by opening a Festive Felt Delicatessen at Maison Diptyque on Bond Street, a collection which still took her a year to sew but this time the goods are bottles of champagne, bottles of scent and Christmas treats including tins of cinnamon biscuits and jars of cranberry sauce. No wonder she's grinning in the promotional photos.
The street abruptly deadens on crossing Brook Street. One of the corner units promises it'll reopen soon for 'luxury piercing' and the former Victoria's Secret is sealed awaiting transformation into Mayfair Quarter. But the glaring eyesore is the skeleton of the former Fenwick department store which closed in February after 130 years trading. Its facade will remain while the interior is hollowed out and the floorplates realigned to create an office block with four smaller retail units underneath. Emporio Armani looks very out of place nextdoor, bookended by unfilled and unlet, an isolated aspirational nucleus before the big brands kick off in earnest. And boy do they.
Breitling. Versace. Loewe. Fendi. Gucci. Jimmy Choo... plus all sorts of names that go over the head of the average woman in the street. The interior of Maison Alaïa is a masterclass in how to fill a space with hardly any dresses, hardly any handbags and a table of illuminated bracelets. Balenciaga displays even less in even more. Amongst all this the entrance to Sotheby's almost doesn't stand out, but do stop to look because above the door is London’s oldest outdoor statue, a black granite bust of the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet dating from approximately the reign of Tutankhamun. If you fancy Eggs Benedict in their restaurant, bids start at £13.95.
Burberry. Hermès. Louis Vuitton. Chanel. Dior... we've definitely gone up a step. There are also signs of a Christmas decoration faceoff underway, with Louis's carousel steeds having the decorative edge over Christian's undersea pastels. The austere block on the corner of Bruton Street is the Time Life Building, an American office block by Michael Rosenauer constructed after the lifting of postwar planning restrictions. Its sculptural treasure is a quartet of doubled-sided abstracts by Henry Moore, who was apparently peeved that nobody allowed them to rotate, and also that the general public hardly ever looked up and noticed them. However the public always notices the two blokes on a bench in the street's brief pedestrianised intermission, a bronze Churchill and a bronze Roosevelt, and often squeezes between them for a selfie.
Hublot. Chopard. Givenchy. Bulgari. Cartier. Graff... which is up another step because we've hit the jewellers. Boutique Cartier is perhaps the visual standout, even without its current festive garnish, defended by footmen during trading hours to sort out the riffraff from the VIPs. Across the street is a massive Ralph Lauren, its window display confirming that it is possible to make tartan look really frumpy. This part of the street has recently been repaved to create a more pedestrian-friendly ambience, complete with red telephone box for perfect photos and an equine Elisabeth Frink shifted here from a lowlier spot on Piccadilly. During the upcoming Christmas switch-on this is also where the champagne car and mulled wine cart will be parking up, because status-wise this is where Bond Street peaks. When the revolution begins, this would be a really satisfying place to start the arson.
It's also where finally, after seven paragraphs, New Bond Street morphs into Old Bond Street. The dividing line is Burlington Gardens, otherwise known as the back of the Royal Academy, because that's how close to Piccadilly we already are. It starts off well with Tiffany & Co, their frontage embellished with Red Lizard Serpentinite pillars and a particularly dapper clock. Things pick up further under the stucco entrance to the Royal Arcade, London's oldest purpose-built shopping arcade which was knocked through to Albermarle Street in 1879. In Queen Victoria's day it housed an umbrella maker, heraldic stationer, confectioner and two florists but these days it's mostly jewellers and statement watches. Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen, two epic fashion houses, slot in back on the main street and attract selfie-taking tourists even when they're closed.
OK, who haven't we had yet? Prada. Yves St Laurent. Dolce & Gabbana. De Beers. They have to be here because it's where the jetset expects them to be, which'll be why I passed several groups dressed in obligatory designer shades of fawn, grey and beige wandering up and down excitedly window-shopping. There's also quite a bit of retail musical chairs going on, for example Gucci used to be here in OBS before they moved to NBS, and their former store is currently being fitted out for Rolex somewhere behind a long gold hoarding which'll allow Watches of Switzerland to move into their existing shop. By the end of the street I was feeling quite overwhelmed by the endless exclusivity of it all, and also a bit guilty at being seriously underdressed.
And then in the very last doorway I saw a grubby duvet flopped over the edge of a step and was reminded that Bond Street in fact exemplifies the very tops and bottoms of our society, and you don't get one without the other.
