Last week I passed by Fenwick on New Bond Street. I’d forgotten that it was closing down, but there she was with days left to the end of her 130- year tenure, propping up the corner in a rather sad way with giant 70 per cent off banners blaring from the once enchanting Christmas windows. A previously classy store flogging off its merch at a brutal discount.
Peeking inside, all that was left of the once-bustling accessories floor was a bleak-looking long shelf lined with dozens of brown faux fur trapper hats. Who knows what stockroom crevice they were dragged up from. I haven’t stepped into Fenwick for years, not even for the loo. Which is perhaps part of the problem.
It used to have great functional departments, a sort of secret spot where you could pick up chic swimwear and lingerie, or dash in to grab a new mascara or length of ribbon. It had a slight off-key, refined charm to it. It didn’t do the bells and whistles of Selfridges, it didn’t have the seductive Tudor style of Liberty, but it was somewhere non-intimidating with its own cosy signature touch. There was comfort in knowing that if for some ghastly reason you had to go to Ascot, you’d at least know where to go to grab a hat.
The pandemic presumably didn’t help, as well as the sluggish recovery to get people back into town, but it was also well behind the online revolution (although that’s where it’s hoping to rebuild business, as well as in its eight regional outposts).
A friend was a buyer there in the late Noughties. Her office was a converted changing room in the basement, her managers insisted she still write out all her orders by hand, and she had to share a laptop. It was, at that time at least, a rather quaint operation that didn’t seem to realise the new modern world of retail was running away from it online.
Its closing — along with the exodus of Condé Nast from Vogue House — brings about the end of an era of glamour from that corner of Hanover Square. But it also joins the depressing boarded-up windows around the rest of town. On Piccadilly Circus, the old Gap is a gaping hole in what should be a prime spot; and then of course poor Topshop. It is still waiting for its Ikea makeover to happen. That’s now due in the autumn, but can anyone get excited about picking up some tea lights on their lunch break?
I miss shopping, which is something you’re not supposed to admit to — but those days of skipping back to the Tube, arms laden with goodies were fun, no? If you did miss your chance to say au revoir to Fenwick, then there’s still time. Wayne Hemingway’s Charity Super.Mkt pop-up initiative is going to be holding court for the next couple of weeks. But after that, the doors will close for good and with it another lost soul of London’s shopping past.
