Can Bond Street be Bond Street without the redoubtable face of Mallett? Apparently it is going to have to adapt, as sooner rather than later, Fendi will be the new tenant of Mallett’s marquee location. Times being the way they are, it has been an open secret that Mallett had wished to shed their prestigious, but ruinously expensive, premises for quite some time. Although it’s reported they wish to maintain a showroom somewhere else in Mayfair, that location has so far not been named.
With Partridge’s very long drawn out, and very public, death throes and Mallett’s vicissitudes, Bond Street’s days as an antiques venue are numbered. But, then, the handwriting was clearly on the wall prior to the economic meltdown of 2008. Bad times functioned as something of a reprieve for all dealers in all venues around the world, as economic contraction kept encroaching luxury outlets at bay. It had occurred to me that, with the virtual shop displacing the actual, this temporary forbearance might in fact be permanent, with the Fendis of the world, selling as they do their ultra fashionable fashionables in multiples, internet buying would render less necessary the placement of a shop on- well, not on every corner, but certainly in the midst of every luxury venue.
Obliquely, that Fendi, to name one example, is back in a shop opening mode is a good thing, possibly indicating that, if not the larger economy, then at least the demand for luxury goods is on an upswing. While in the longer term, this might bode well for all of us who sell luxury goods, for the near term, though, the better capitalized luxury brands have a greater ability to renew their threat to co-opt all the limited space in the most desirable, best travelled shopping streets. For those ten or so of you who don’t know, Fendi is one of French luxury conglomerate LVMH’s many brands. With Fendi’s new, and Mallett’s old, strategic Bond Street location directly across from Sotheby’s main entrance, one wonders whether LVMH’s majority shareholder Bernard Arnault doesn’t also want a front row seat to witness what goes on at the auction house. Who knows? Perhaps fanciful, but possibly Arnault wishes to enter the salesroom business that his archrival Francois Pinault embarked upon with his acquisition of Christies in 1998.