Bond Street is known for its 'billboard' fashion store frontages, its flag pageantry, high-roller clients and celebrity influencers – not to forget the most expensive retail square footage on the planet. Less known is how all this started in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the truly fascinating people involved. Several of them were hugely charismatic, but perhaps most consequential of all were Georgiana Cavendish, Oscar Wilde and George 'Beau' Brummell.
In 1784, Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, set the street on a new trajectory. It is hard to do her significance full justice. London was a different, younger and more intimate-feeling world then. A high percentage of those seen out on its streets were children, teens, or young adults; meanwhile, a mere 1,000 or so individuals held peerages. Life then might have felt far more magnified than today. Yet a clue lies in her maiden name, Spencer – the same family as Diana, Princess of Wales. Georgiana had the same beauty, star power and designer-crowning sway as her world-famous relative.
Not only was Georgiana the trendsetter of Georgian Society, credited with importing haute couture and popularising hair towers, but also she was a political activist, similar to Angelina Jolie or George Clooney. The general election of 1784 saw her campaign on behalf of Whig politician Charles James Fox. The Whigs (versus the Tories) favoured checks on the King's power. In another echo across the centuries, this allied Georgiana with the Prince of Wales – for a while, at least. He had his own reasons for opposing the King, who was his father.
On the corner of Bond and Conduit Streets, plume-master James Carbery supplied ostrich feathers, as used in court dress, military uniforms and the Prince of Wales's heraldic badge (three white plumes). Georgiana turned ornamental feathers, specifically those imitating fox brushes, into a fashion trend and symbol of support for Fox. Aged 26, her powers of political canvassing were formidable. "Your eyes are so bright, my lady, that I could light my pipe by them!" a labourer told her in the key voting district of St. Paul's Covent Garden.
Georgiana also encouraged her followers to boycott Tory-supporting tradesmen in Covent Garden and reward loyal ones in Bond Street like Carbery. Bond Street lay around the corner from her residence, Devonshire House. Running between Berkeley and Stratton streets, this was another Piccadilly mansion, only it survived far longer than Clarendon House. Bond Street was not a prime residential address in the way Piccadilly or Grosvenor Square were, and that allowed shops – heavily glazed at ground-floor level – to flourish there. The street increasingly lay at the heart of Mayfair's 'beau monde'.
In the 1790s, a new phenomenon emerged: the Bond Street Loungers. Gentlemen with a taste for high fashion liked to strut along the street's pavements, their peacocking gait earning its own nickname, the Bond Street Roll (a slight swagger or swaying of the hips, designed to show off the tight fit of breeches and what was called 'fine leg'). A good portion of these Loungers' days was spent checking newspaper columns and articles for mention of themselves – the closest they could get to Instagram.
The Loungers' preening wasn't universally applauded. Hot-headed Thomas Pitt, 2nd Baron Camelford, drew his pistol on Loungers annoying him outside his lodgings in New Bond Street. The draw of the street only grew. Next door to John 'Gentleman' Jackson's Boxing Academy at 13 Old Bond Street stood Henry Angelo’s Fencing Academy. There were also discreet high-class brothels known as 'sporting hotels'. During that era, ladies of the 'Ton' would not be seen on Bond Street after midday (i.e. 4-5pm) without a chaperone.
Yet changing mores let figures of humble origin become influential – notably George 'Beau' Brummell, the grandson of a shopkeeper. Brummell rejected the ostentatious dress sense of the Prince of Wales. Self-control was the new craze. Gentlemen should wear their clothes rather than the other way round, Brummell decreed. As is recognisable on Bond Street today, the emphasis came to be on fineness of fabric, the cut of the garments and the art of contrasts - the juxtaposition of a navy coat and buff trousers, say. Brummell frequented John Weston at 34 Old Bond Street – reputedly, Regency London's most expensive tailor.
Brummell’s bathing ritual was a performance in itself, witnessed by the Prince of Wales and nobility. The Dukes of Bedford, Beaufort and Rutland all observed this routinised 'glow up'. For at least two hours a day, Brummell would administer his ‘ablutions’ – a form of washing ceremony that left his body lobster pink. Critical was the elaborate tying of his starched white cravat. The slightest mistake required him to start over with fresh linen. Onlookers were rapt. Favouring good hygiene over the use of disguising scents, it helped popularise barbershops such as Truefitt and Hill, which moved to 40 Old Bond Street in 1811.
The Royal Academy moved to Burlington House in 1867, and galleries then arrived on Bond Street, attracting their own crowds. Sir Coutts Lindsay, aesthete and dilettante, founded the Grosvenor Gallery in New Bond Street with his wife. Reviewing it, the poet and playwright Oscar Wilde revelled in the velvet couches, flowers and walls hung with scarlet damask – ‘lovely to look on, and in harmony with the surrounding works of art.’ Wilde name checks the gallery at the start of The Picture of Dorian Gray, his famous and indeed only novel, published in 1890 when he was 35. He also frequented the Royal Academy (see below).
Wilde, too, ensured he was arrestingly turned out, sometimes with fedora and cape, at other times with a top hat and carnation, invariably drawing a crowd. We can imagine him strolling on Bond Street, gazing up at its dramatic rooflines, seeing it all as some great play. He would buy headwear from Scott’s hatters at 1 Old Bond Street, which was awarded multiple Royal Warrants, and he didn't neglect Stewart's, the tea room and confectionery shop opposite at no. 50 (on the corner of Piccadilly), known for its sublime cakes and 'dainties'. 'Everything in moderation, including moderation,' as he might say.
On Old and New Bond Street, little is truly new, nor indeed old – rather, it is timeless.