Bond Street is now divided between New Bond Street, the northern section and Old Bond Street, the southern section. But it’s still commonly called just Bond Street. Just visually you might wonder why Bond Street, relatively narrow and modest in appearance when compared with the elegance of Regent Street and the wide, eternally crowded bombast of Oxford Street, is actually the ‘boss’ location of the green set. Well, if we boil it down to simple terms there’s a couple of reasons. Firstly, it going as an exclusive shopping street far earlier than the other two. It was built up by Sir Thomas Bond around 1720. History does not reveal if he was ever shaken, or indeed stirred. Prestigious shops were established on Bond Street throughout the 18th century.
Secondly, Bond Street has managed to maintain this air of exclusivity. So much so that Carl Faberge’s only establishment outside of Russia came to Bond Street in 1910. It closed five years later due to turmoil in Russia caused by the First World War. Bond Street is still home to upmarket jewellers like Asprey and Garrards. It’s also the auction capital of London, being home to both Sotheby’s and Bonham’s.
There’s a sculpture that I really like in Bond Street. It shows what looks like a bench with two old codgers chewing the fat on it. It’s called Allies, and the two old codgers are actually FDR and Winston Churchill. It was erected in 1995 by the Bond Street Association to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II.
No comments:
Post a Comment