Just 2 more photos I took on that brief early morning walk in London.
I hadn't realized really just how many country wear/field sport stores there are in that small area of London. I count at least 5-6 and I wasn't even looking for them.
Each store holds untold treasures of all sorts but I couldn't comfortably shoot their interiors for you.
What a great shopping town for classic wear!
Safari jackets, field coats, ammunition belts, beautiful, beautiful shotguns, wellies, saddles and harnesses, hacking jackets, heavy tweeds, high polish black riding boots country ties and cufflinks, as well as whips if you legitimately need them. Everything for a life on the manor except the dogs. All in the middle of the most expensive real estate in London, all within 10 minutes walk of each other.
It makes me think how poor great cities like NYC are in this regard.
Anyone remember the grand old Ambercrombie & Fitch, when it really was A&F, and not a teeny bopper hang out?! That's the difference in the original shopping experience which London still offers. Those buffalo horns and impala head in the Boss photo are not paper mache and there are no blown up photos of hollow chested, pouty boy-kids or doe eyed pre pubescent girls staring down, in black and white no less, at you in these stores.
It's fascinating to eavesdrop on a conversation in a store like William Evans on St. James St. next to Duke's Hotel when a shooter brings in his gun for cleaning and repair and settles in for a while; if you think that some gents here are obsessed with bespoke, you don't know what obsessed is until you get in with shooters.
Cufflink79, that is indeed the new Marinella store in London on 23 Wigglemore St. in Mayfair. It is a model of the Neapolitan original. Can you believe that that tiny business was valued at over $60mm. For a tie store?! I think you and I are in the wrong business.
If you like cars, well, there aren't too many Rollers any more in London that I observed.
Many more Bentleys however. You've got to love the Continental GT. I bumped into a Bentley dealer in a pub who bought me a Stella after I told him that I was a member of the LL. He told me that the average age of Bentley's customers has fallen from 65 to 45 with the introduction of the GT. That's a valuable bit of knowledge, there.
