Marylebone really has become one of the most chic neighbourhoods in London. It used to be a quiet backwater, north of Mayfair, south of Regents Park, west of Soho and East of Edgware. But now. Wow. It’s so, sooo chic.
Walking along Marylebone High Street you hear foreign languages (French, Spanish, American) and the occasional indigenous English (but not a lot of Cockney, unless you’re in the back of a cab).
Pretty much every single shop, pub, café, restaurant, skin care shop, is chic. It’s so ridiculously well designed, clean, upmarket, you almost feel you’re not quite well dressed enough. Mind you, that’s not an unusual feeling in my case.
You can actually have an entertaining hour doing no more or less than walking up and down Marylebone High Street and looking at your fellow pedestrians. Just take a look at what these people are wearing, and in some cases saying. They go out for cup of coffee and croissant and they look like they’re ready for a catwalk in Milan. They’re so dripping with style, they’re so clean and brushed up, they all look like they’ve had a full facial and colonic irrigation before dreaming of stepping out.
You can expect to overhear this: “She took me to Cecconi’s for lunch. That was good of her.” “I’ve just got to nip into Waitrose for a Chateaubriand”.
Note, Waitrose. I’d say Aldi and Lidl about as far away as you can get from Marylebone High Street. Waitrose is the perfect inhabitant of Marylebone. You just wouldn’t get any other supermarket near the place.
Let’s take a wander.
From the north, we have the beautiful, stunning, manicured and hedged Regents Park with its wonderful rose garden, Open Air Theatre, Broadwalk, lake, and open spaces. If only the people running Regents Park were running the country, we’d be OK.
Saunter from the park through a section of glorious Regency terraced houses, past the St Marylebone Parish Church, where they have concerts as well as services, then hang a right down Marylebone High Street (after you’ve passed the Royal Academy of Music, where they also have concerts, of course).
At the top of the high street there is the London Clinic, an outstanding private hospital and a good place to be if you are extremely ill, so long as you have a very sympathetic insurance company. Interesting fact: the London Clinic is on the site of what was Tyburn Manor House, which existed from c 1250 to 1791 and was used by Henry VIII and Elizabeth as a hunting lodge. Yes, in those days, Marylebone wasn’t an integral part of the city, it was the countryside, with the odd wild boar, stag, and other creatures roaming about.
Get past that and it’s the Conran Shop. The late Sir Terence Conran, arbiter of taste and champion of modernism, who like many other such champions, lived in a Georgian house (I think). The Conran Shop is a kinda upmarket version of Habitat. See what I mean about Marylebone? There’s a Conran restaurant above it, with of course, a suitably pretentious name, Orrery. You can be forgiven for not knowing what an orrery is. Apparently it’s a mechanical model of the solar system, invented by a in the eighteenth century by a brainbox who was funded by the Earl of Orrery. So I guess the Earl of Orrery got his money’s worth.
Unsurprisingly, the Orrery deli is called Orrery Epicerie, because, Terence was most keen to bring some Provencal sophistication to the nether regions of London, to civilise us, to teach us a thing or two about style.
Well, as far as the haute monde in Marylebone is concerned, Marylebone High Street is the very epicentre of the solar system, that is to say, the sun itself, with other London neighbourhoods such as Dalston, Bow, Wandsworth, and others being remote, distant planets, so far away, possibly inhabited by life forms, but if so, aliens with about four heads and one large eyeball.
Because when you live and hang out in Marylebone High Street, you don’t want, you don’t need to go anywhere else, unless it’s Heathrow T5 for a business class seat on BA to Venice for the Biennale first class bed to Barbados at Christmas.
It has it all, for people who have everything. I will explain.
Bonpoint, that’s an extraordinarily upscale shop for children’s clothes. The clothes are so lavishly made, using the finest materials, and superbly designed. They look like the kind of attire that a seven year old European prince would wear to visit his grandparents. There’s another posh kids’ clothes shop over the road, with, yes, another French name, Petit Bateau.
Next up, Fischer’s, the Austrian style, retro restaurant designed to imitate life in Vienna in the 1930s and established by Jeremy King, of Le Caprice, Ivy, Wolseley fame. (Note: Ivy and Caprice now owned by the London Tsar of restaurants, Richard Caring, who seems to own most establishments, including Annabel’s, and who has a hair style that looks like an Afghan dog has landed on top of his head.
Jeremy King has a real talent for this kind of thing and the atmosphere, service, Viennese menu and bubbly banter within, make for an entertaining and enjoyable lunch, should you fancy immersing yourself in that particular era.
There are plenty of pubs and cafes but again, these are uber-tasteful and immaculately presented.
The Prince Regent pub. Le Pain Quotidien. La Brasseria (sounds a bit like a cross between a Brasserie and brassiere). Carlotta (trattoria). Home Marylebone ‘Bar and Natural Kitchen’. Fishworks (three Jersey oysters and glass of Champagne for £22). The Marylebone (pub). La Fromagerie. And at the southern end, in Marylebone Lane, Le Relais de Venise, The Golden Hinde (fish and chips), Ottolenghi and a big new place, 108.
Another great shop to mention: Ortigia, a Sicilian brand of soap, fragrance and other products, all beautifully designed.
By the way, there is a super old film poster shop opposite 108, wonderful old posters of movies, such as Barbarella with Jane Fonda, ‘the space age adventuress whose sex-ploits are among the most bizarre ever seen’. Go Jane.
On Sunday mornings there is a farmer’s market, which used to occupy a big area (old bomb site) but now there is a very large new and very expensive looking block of flats going up in that space, the market occupies Aybrook Street. Worth a visit. The fish stall looks amazing (lobsters!), and the cheese stall also (those giant wheels of cheese).
Lots of upmarket clothes shops. It seems the smarter they are, the less clothes they have in them. Is the marketing principle of the creation of scarcity? The charity shops are rammed with old clothes. But go to Zadig & Voltaire or The Kooples and you’d think there was an worldwide shortage.
Last but not least, in Manchester Square, just off Marylebone High Street, is the Wallace Collection, surely one of the finest collections of art and antiques in London. Private and eclectic collections put together by wealthy patrons often contain a wonderful and disparate variety of elements that contribute to a whole, the whole being the fundamental aesthetic of the collector. The Wallace Collection contains masterpieces of painting, sculpture, furniture, arms and armour, and porcelain… including an exquisite Rembrandt portrait of his son, Titus, painted in 1657. The museum is full of delightful surprises, amazing French clocks, and a large collection of armoury. There is a new café in the central courtyard, an ideal place to meet up and chat.
Enjoy Marylebone, it really is unique!
