StyleMaven: A Shopping Guide to Unique Clothing Boutiques in Covent Garden, London

Covent Garden

Covent Garden is one of London’s coolest shopping areas, known for one-off boutiques and intriguingly odd-ball specialist shops – but visit in a hurry and you may well miss the best. Serious shoppers ignore the picturesque old market place, leaving it to the ever-present crowds of anorak-clad tourists, and head straight for nearby Floral Street. It was Paul Smith who put Floral Street on the map – his quirky emporia for men, women and children take up most of one side of the street – attracting other big-name designers such as Nicole Farhi, and the interesting mix of smaller shops that now lines the alleys leading up to Long Acre. For organic food, excellent herbal cosmetics and one of England’s very best cheese shops try Neal’s Yard, a tiny haven within Covent Garden that’s kept the laid-back feel the whole place used to have. For the most part, though, this relaxed atmosphere has gone, replaced by urban bustle and frantic shopping, fuelled by the area’s rapidly increasing number of funky and hip boutiques.

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Duffer of St. George
29 Shorts Gardens
It’s a fact that if you want to find stylish clothes, you’re best off following Japanese students. In London they’ll take you straight here.
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Hope + Glory
17 Thomas Neals Arcade, Earlham St.
If you’re under 40, with a taste for simple clothes with a club-scene twist, make a trip to this cramped store.
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Koh Samui
65 Monmouth Street
To call this store colourful would be like calling Texas spacious. If you’re after a party frock, there’s no place in town that comes close.
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Nigel Hall
18 Floral Street
If only every store could be like this: staff who couldn’t be more helpful and clothes that couldn’t be more tasteful.
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Paul Smith
40-44 Floral Street
Less a shop, more an institution. Step into this treasure trove and you’ll never want to leave.
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Sam Walker
27 Shorts Gardens
There’s no logic to the stock selection here - the store seems to have been laid out by an eccentric 1960s obsessive.
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