A BIRTHDAY FOR BOND STREET

• Published in: The New York times
• Main Authors: Goddard, Donald, Donald Goddard is a writer who lives in London
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, N.Y New York Times Company 01.06.1986
• Edition: Late Edition (East Coast)
• Subjects: GODDARD, DONALD; RETAIL STORES AND TRADE; TRAVEL AND VACATIONS; LONDON (ENG); GREAT BRITAIN
• ISSN: 0362-4331

It had also become the place in the civilized world for ladies of fashion to buy and show off the very latest gewgaws and fripperies, thus pioneering the art of recreational shopping a good century before the idea seeded itself along the Faubourg St.-Honore, the Via Condotti, Fifth Avenue and, at its final remove, in the febrile excesses of Palm Beach and Beverly Hills. Nor were gentlemen immune to the Bond Street cachet. The best tailors, hatters, haberdashers and bootmakers also migrated there, bringing with them London's fops and dandies, the Bond Street Loungers, who even cultivated a special walk called the Bond Street Roll, an insolent, swaying gait with hands stuffed deep into pockets and ivory toothpick clenched in the teeth. During the Regency, Beau Brummell set the capstone on the street's reputation for elegance with almost daily appearances there to visit Weston's, his tailor, to browse through the bookstores, and to gamble, gossip or take coffee in the clubs and ''sporting'' hotels. The old one starts inauspiciously at the Piccadilly end in a clutter of For Rent signs and rug merchants' closing-down sales, but Sac Freres is still miraculously hanging in there at No. 45, surely the only store in the world dealing exclusively in amber - Chinese, Burmese and Russian for preference, and in every shade from straw yellow to blood red. Across the street at No. 3, Ackermann & Sons continues to deal in fine prints, as it has from several addresses hereabouts since the 18th century, and at No. 43, the galleries of Thomas Agnew & Sons, built in 1876 on the site of the house where Laurence Sterne, the author of ''Tristram Shandy,'' died a pauper's death in 1768, continue to flourish at the pinnacle of the international art world, still mounting splendid exhibitions of Old Masters and watercolors as well as work by modern English painters. Opposite, in the equally boring 1950's Time-Life Building at the corner of Bruton Street, Hermes intends to offer a more durable souvenir of the occasion with a limited edition of a specially designed silk scarf of the sort worn to protect expensive hairdos at point-to-point race meetings. For about $110 each, 500 status-conscious heads will be able to tell the world where they were in June without having to open their mouths. Other tercentenary souvenirs include a china dish from Chinacraft, 130 New Bond Street, and a limited edition of 300 Bilston enamel boxes at about $85 from Halcyon Days, 14 Brook Street. (Again, 20 percent of the proceeds from these items will go to charity.) North of the Conduit Street/Bruton Street intersection, a frankly nondescript prospect is relieved here and there by a few fine 19th-century storefronts that continue to resist the homogenizing march of progress. Tessiers, for instance, at 26 New Bond Street since 1852, has one of the best left in London: a galleried fascia over three round arches that afford a deep display window for jewelry, silver and plate on each side of glazed double doors advertising, in gilt letters, such useful services as ''Family Jewels Re-Arranged.''