London's Link and Lace

The nation’s high street is about to become a pedestrian plaza, and the question is who is ready and who is still selling phone cases

Oxford Street Pedestrianisation: What a Traffic-Free High Street Means for Fashion Retail

I have a complicated relationship with Oxford Street. It is where I bought my first proper coat and where I have, on more than one December afternoon, considered giving up fashion and moving to a cottage. It is a mile and a half of retail history, bus fumes and people stopping dead in front of you to look at a map.

From the end of this month, the buses go. Trade press reported on 29 September that the pedestrianisation start date has been revealed as 26 October, when the Mayor of London says Britain’s most famous shopping street will be mostly free of cars. The mayor described a pedestrian plaza where flagship retail would sit alongside workplaces and host events from sport to fashion. The head of the West End’s business body, representing more than a hundred streets and eight hundred businesses, called it an important milestone.

The Dress Rehearsal

We had a preview during fashion week. For one day, Sunday 21 September from noon until eight, the street was traffic-free from Regent Street to Orchard Street, billed as a chance to experience the potential of the mayor’s proposals, with music, art, culture and food.

I like the idea of it enormously. Walking down the middle of Oxford Street means you finally get to look up. There are some very fine upper storeys on that street which most of us have never noticed, because we were always watching for the number 98.

The Retail Case

The argument for pedestrianisation is one retailers elsewhere in Europe have made for years. People on foot linger. People who linger spend. A street you can stroll is a street where you might cross to the other side because something in a window caught your eye, which on the old Oxford Street required either a pedestrian crossing or a will.

Fashion in particular depends on browsing. Nobody impulse-buys a blazer from the top deck of a bus. If footfall rises and dwell time lengthens, the flagships that have invested in their stores should benefit.

The Honest Caveats

I have three reservations, and they are about retail, not traffic engineering.

The first is the offer. A pedestrian street is only as good as what lines it. Oxford Street has genuine anchors and it also has, let us be candid, a number of shops selling luggage, vapes and sweets of uncertain provenance. A plaza will not fix that. Landlords and the council have to. A beautiful pavement in front of a shut unit is still a shut unit.

The second is access. Not everyone can walk a mile and a half. Older shoppers, disabled shoppers and anyone carrying four bags and a toddler relied on those buses. The plan includes provision for accessibility and I hope it is generous, because a high street that is only pleasant for the fit is not a success.

The third is where the traffic goes. The streets to the north and south are home to independent shops and to people. They will be watching.

Who Stands to Gain

The department stores, obviously. Selfridges has understood for a century that a shop is theatre, and theatre likes a forecourt. The big fashion flagships will be able to use the street itself for launches and events, which is what the mayor’s remarks about fashion and culture point to.

I am more curious about the middle of the market. A pleasant street raises rents. Rising rents favour the largest brands. If the result is a handsome boulevard of the same twelve global names you find in every capital, something will have been lost. What would make Oxford Street worth a special trip is British retail you cannot find at an airport.

A Modest Proposal

Give some of those empty units, on short cheap leases, to young designers and small labels. London trains more fashion talent than almost anywhere and then offers it nowhere to sell. A row of rotating pop-ups between Bond Street and Oxford Circus would do more for the street’s reputation than any amount of paving.

What to Look For

A single traffic-free Sunday proves very little about trade, and I would be wary of anyone who claims to know from one afternoon whether tills rang more than usual. The real evidence will come over months: footfall counts, vacancy rates, which brands sign leases and which leave.

What a trial day can show is how people behave. Every pedestrianised street I have known, from Copenhagen to Carnaby, fills within minutes with families ambling down the centre line as if it had always been a promenade. Happy people are, in my experience, more inclined to try something on.

My Verdict, Provisionally

I am for it. I think the street has been failing for years and needed something drastic. But pedestrianisation is the stage, not the play. On 26 October the cars leave. What matters is what the landlords, the brands and the council put in their place.

I shall be back in November, in a warmer coat, to report.

And for Amusement

The street has long been a target for humourists. The London Prat has pages of English satirical news on Oxford Street and UK satirical news about pedestrianisation, and the rest of my style column lives there too. Bohiney Magazine handles American shopping streets.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/