Bond Street’s loss is Sloane Street’s gain in London’s luxury retail landscape
Amid a decline in tourist spending in Mayfair, the high number of wealthy local shoppers is luring fashion brands to Chelsea
It’s a sunny spring Wednesday afternoon and Chelsea’s Pavilion Road is buzzing. Groups of twenty-somethings clad in preppy gear catch up over drinks, stylish mums with kids in tow browse the cheesemonger, friends enjoy ice cream cones while strolling down the mews road.
It’s a picture perfect scene of affluent Londoners at leisure that is quintessentially Chelsea. It is also what is driving many independent fashion brands to open up shop on the glossiest thoroughfare in the wealthy west London neighbourhood: Sloane Street.
“I never thought we were going to end up in Chelsea,” says Alice Temperley, founder of the eponymous brand. Temperley had a flagship store in Mayfair’s Bruton Street that closed in 2020. When, in 2024, she reopened a London location, Temperley picked the southern end of Sloane Street. “There are restaurants, bars, it’s a very nice sociable shopping experience,” she says by way of explanation.
Since 2024, labels including Veronica Beard, Toteme, Jessica McCormack, Zimmermann, Roksanda, Erdem, Ulla Johnson, DeMellier and Ami have followed Temperley in opening or announcing upcoming openings on or near Sloane Street — a marked move away from Bond Street and Mayfair.
Chelsea, Sloane Street and King’s Road have a long association with fashion, from the Swinging Sixties to the punk avant-garde of the 1970s to the Sloane Rangers of the 1980s. But while the area has always been attractive for retailers, the appeal of the south end of Sloane Street has recently been boosted by several factors, including landlord Cadogan Estates’ funding of a makeover of the street and nearby Sloane Square through a £60mn investment.
The works included widening pavements and adding new greenery, street furniture and better lighting to encourage shoppers to walk Sloane Street’s full length. Hugh Seaborn, Cadogan Estates chief executive, reports that in the first two and a half months of 2026, footfall was up 9.3 per cent and trade increased 6 per cent compared with the same period in 2025. Seaborn explains that retail partners “were seeking an enhanced environment within which to trade, and that’s what we delivered”.
Beyond Cadogan’s improvements, brands are being lured to Sloane Street by the presence of reliable and wealthy local consumers. Since the pandemic, and the drop in international travel that came with it, brands have been working on reducing their dependence on tourist spending, which in the UK capital was also hit by the abolition of the VAT Retail Export Scheme in 2021.
Labels are now focusing on finding meaningful ways to nurture links with consumers on their home turf. In this context, Chelsea has become an important target for retail expansion in London, more so than other comparable high-end locations, such as Bond Street, where the bulk of footfall is represented by international visitors rather than residents. Notting Hill’s Westbourne Grove is another west London locale that has received a glossy fillip from new international boutique openings.
“Our customer lives there. So whether she is taking the tube to work, or she is dropping her child off school, or she is having lunch on Pavilion Road, she is in that area multiple times per week,” says Stephanie Unwin, president of US brand Veronica Beard, which opened its second London store in Sloane Street in 2024. The first one, in Mayfair’s Bruton Street, is not “necessarily in her path unless she is working in that area”, Unwin adds.
For Australian resort brand Zimmermann, which also opened a second London location on Sloane Street in February, the appeal was to have a “local store for a lot of our customers”, says co-founder and chief operating officer Simone Zimmermann. “Sloane Street is a community, is a home.”
At €7,327 per square foot per year, a store in Slone Street is also considerably more affordable than one in Bond Street, which comes at €19,228 per square foot, according to data from estate agent Savills. The West End shopping destination, which at the end of 2025 was the world’s most expensive location for retailers, is out of reach for most of the aspirational, independent brands that have recently flocked to Sloane Street. Many of Bond Street’s vast flagships often appear to be empty of customers, too.
“If you are going to Bond Street you have to spend a fortune,” says Temperley, highlighting the street’s high property rates but also the need to renovate more dated stores. For Nicolas Santi-Weil, chief executive of French brand Ami, which opened a store on Sloane Street in May, the advantageous financials played a part in the decision as well as the opportunity to work with a “clear” space and agreeing on a one-and-a half-year lease that can be extended.
“We thought, it’s a good way to try this neighbourhood,” he says. “At first we were more looking in Mayfair, but then this opportunity came up. The agent showed us how many brands were opening. There is a huge footfall and we know we work pretty well when the footfall is high, so we decided to give it a try.”
Many of the new openings have focused on the southern end of Sloane Street, sitting between King’s Road, which is dominated by high-street retailers, and the northern end, which is preferred by high-end labels such as Chanel, Hermès and Brunello Cucinelli. Because of the location, and the brands’ price point, these stores have the opportunity to capture both demographics.
“It’s like a bridge between luxury and lower-priced brands, so for us it was a really important location. Both customers are our customers,” says Mireia Llusia-Lindh, founder of handbag brand DeMellier, which is opening a store in Sloane Square in the autumn.
“A lot of our competitors are in Regent Street or Covent Garden, but Chelsea felt very British, very London, very elevated,” she adds. “Besides, it doesn’t get more iconic than Sloane Square.”