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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
To survive a store must move with the times supplying
the public with what it wants or at least what those
intangibly mysterious gods of fashion decide what the
people want. Liberty’s of London, possibly the most
beautiful of all the London department stores, is a
master of the craft with a long history of associating
itself with the crème-de-la-crème of high fashion from
William Morris and Gabriel Dante Rosetti in the
nineteenth century to Yves Saint Laurent and Dame
Vivienne Westwood in the twentieth and to the brave
new world of today’s fashionitas from the trendy
plimsoles of Nike to the teetering heels of Manolo
Blahnik’s shoes. Libertys found itself well placed in
the 1950s when fashionable London beat a path to its
doorstep - to Carnaby Street .
Carnaby Street is named for a grand mansion built here
in the 1680s. From the 1820s a market was established
on the site. Benjamin Disraeli, not just Victoria’s
favourite Prime Minister but also a novelist wrote in
his 1845 novel Sybil of "a carcase-butcher famous in
Carnaby-market". The street started its associations
with alternative culture and fashion as early as the
1930s when a social club was opened here for black
intellectuals named for the African-American jazz
singer Florence Mills. John Stephens was a welders
apprentice from Glasgow who had moved to London,
where, after a stint as a waiter had taken a job first in
the military department at Moss Bros and then at
London’s first boutique for young men
Vince Mans
Shop
in nearby Newburgh Street among the Soho
workshops that sewed for Savile Row on the opposite,
posh side of Regent Street.
The young John Stephen opened his own shop on Beak
Street in Mayfair but when it was destroyed by fire he
moved to an anonymous sort of parade at the back of
the London Palladium where rents were cheap.
Stephens painted his first shop on Carnaby Street
bright canary yellow and employed trendy young men
to sell jeans, 3-button shirts and Italian knits to the
backdrop of blaring pop music. His clothes were
worn by The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Who
and The Small Faces who played at the Marquee
Club just a few streets away on Wardour Street.
Young London loved it and Stephens was to become
known as the King of Carnaby Street. The street
became the epicentre of Swinging London attracting
other entrepreneurs including Irvine Sellars who was
to use the fortune he made in unisex clothing to
become the property developer responsible for
London’s Shard. Although he would pioneer the
Mod fashion John Stephen himself, pictured below,
kept to the gentlemanly uniform of that era, a
sharply tailored Savile Row suit with white shirt.
He was a flamboyant man nonetheless accessorising
his look with his snow white German Shepherd dog,
Prince, who regularly dined with him at a little bistro
within walking distance of his empire - The Ivy.
No shrinking violet Stephens was to say that:
"Carnaby is my creation. I feel about it the same
way Michelangelo felt about the beautiful statues
he created."
Stephens died in 2004 and the following year
Westminster City Council marked his importance
with a plaque at No 1 Carnaby Street cementing his
place in the long and fascinating history of shops
and shopping in London.
Pictured on page 11, Martin who wrote this article
has collaborated with Sarah who has taught the
shopping module on the London Blue Badge guide
course for the past 25 years to create a brand new
itinerary all about the history of shops and
shopping in London.
Turn over for details of
Are You Being Served?
It’s available daily all year and there’s also a
special Christmas edition of the tour.