King's Road, Chelsea
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for the King's Road
Best for: fashion (big chains, niche chains and
independent boutiques), home furnishings (chains and designer
stores). You will also find cinemas, pubs, places to eat, the
Royal Court
Theatre and the Saatchi
Gallery.
The King’s Road was the place where the beautiful people used to
hang out in the swinging sixties, followed by the punks in the
seventies, and now it's where Made in Chelsea is
filmed. The road remains fashionable and funky. It has a great
variety of shops, from the iconic Peter
Jones department store and international fashion in
the recently built Duke of York’s Square, all
at the Sloane Square end, to more independent shops towards World's
End. Don’t give up where there’s a break in the shops – there are
many unique retailers in the next section of the street. Overall
it’s a stress-free place where you can sit in a pavement café, pub
or restaurant and absorb the atmosphere as well as shop.
Specialist shops: VV Rouleaux for ribbons
and trimmings, Green and
Stone for artist’s materials, storage specialists the
Holding Company,
interior designer Tricia Guild’s Designer’s Guild,
Bourbon Hanby antiques
centre, Limelight original
movie posters, Rococo
Chocolates for handmade artisan chocolate,
Blue Velvet
and French Sole for classic
pumps, the Blue Bird shop,
restaurant and
café on the site of the Bluebird Garage that land
speed record holder Donald Campbell named his cars after, and
Vivienne Westwood’s World’s End shop with
its surreal clock. Partridges Food Market
operates on Saturdays in Duke of York Square.
People spotting: the 60s hippy chicks, 70s
punks and mohicans may have gone now, but people do seem to be more
beautiful here, and the rich and famous almost go unnoticed. Look
out for newly married couples posing for photos on the steps of
Chelsea Registry Office, they could well be celebrities.
Trivia:Christian the Lion lived in a furnture
shop called Sophisticat on Kings Road in 1969. He was
eventually returned to the wild by his owners and the YouTube clip
of their reunion a year later is one of the most frequent downloads
of all time.