My favourite shop


Last week I stumbled upon my New Favourite Shop. No, it’s not Shop at Maison Bertaux (although that also is just marvellous, with its Eley Kishimoto tees, Sonia by Sonia Rykiel stripy socks and APC everything, all with a side serving of pastries and coffee), but good old Waterstones in Piccadilly. This amazing building used to be the old Simpsons store (think quaint old-school department store that no one ever went to) but was revamped to become a five floor bookshop extravaganza.

On the top floor is the Fifth Floor Café which is café heaven, and happens to be adjacent to the fashion and photography book department. I bought Andy Warhol, The Day The Factory Died, a wee photo book of all his friends and associates arriving at his funeral – a veritable 80s-fest of Chanel bags and black Rayban Wayfarers. But I had to self-restrain from buying David Bailey’s NY JS DB 62 (a visual feast of photos of Jean Shrimpton in 1960s New York) and Richard Avedon’s portrait book In The American West as well.

There was also a nicely genteel bar adorned with framed posters taken from the book Cult Rock Posters by Roger Crimlis and Alwyn W Turner. The icing on the cake? A huge selection of Moleskine notebooks, diaries and travel guides (yes, I’m a stationery junkie) on the ground floor. What with all that and the magazine section I could practically spend an entire day there. Actually, I think I did.