Coming Up: The Poshest Street Party in Britain

I’ve just been invited to a party. It’s a street party. It’s a very posh street party – because it’s being held in Jermyn Street, home to the British tailoring establishment and the Cavendish Hotel.

Beau Brummel, the nonpareil of fashion, an an elephant, enjoy a little conversation in Jermyn Street

There’s something very British about street parties – many Londoners celebrated the end of the Second World War by closing off the street and having a knees-up, with red white and blue bunting, a bang-up fry-up and a proper cuppa char. (Cup of tea, to non-Cockneyfied readers.) But I get the impression the Jermyn Street party is going to be a good bit classier than that.

Besides tailoring and bootmaking, Jermyn Street and its surroundings feature some excellent food stores – Paxton & Whitfield, the cheese shop, and Fortnum & Masons (the front is on Piccadilly, but Jermyn Street claims the food hall!) for example. There are numerous shirtmakers and tailors, and there’s Floris – a superb shop with elegant scents and soaps. Everything to furnish the man about town with the basic necessities; it’s been that way since the Regency, when Beau Brummel made this area of town the most fashionable half a mile on earth. It’s all utterly, utterly British – the sort of restrained but sturdy elegance that eschews bling and grunge in equal measure.

On Saturday, September 4th, Jermyn Street will be closed to traffic, and there will be a free hog roast provided by the Cavendish, as well as cheese and tea tastings, catwalk shows, live music, a puppet show, and a display of sports cars. It sounds like a fun afternoon out – as long as I can resist the siren call of that Fortnums marmalade…

But what I really want to see is the demonstration by Church’s – I’ve always wanted to see how shoes are (hand)-made. Meanwhile, I shall point my significant other in the direction of TM Lewin’s ‘How to iron your shirts’ demo, and hope he learns something.

photo by Loz Flowers on flickr