We’ve plenty of American Express around here- reliable old green cards for personal purchases, and with a membership since 1976, a number I can cite from memory, and, wait for it, platinum cards for business use. As well, we are American Express merchants. Times being the way they are, who can resist the prospect of an airline mile for every dollar charged? Although it is not often that clients use any charge card, when they do, it will likely be American Express. Without doubt, we’ve been at least tangentially responsible for a number of bonus mile first class trips to Europe.
I say all this by way of explaining why we get Departures magazine, the membership organ (sounds a bit rude, doesn’t it? I beg your pardon) for American Express and possibly explain why we tend to read it, when World of Interiors stacks up for several months at a time waiting for us to give it a look.
While the current issue has some good post-holiday spa and de-tox advice, appropriate as we try to metabolize the last of the New Year’s Day ham, my focus was on the squib from Nick Foulkes on beloved Mount Street in Mayfair. As with the literary postcard from a year ago in W, Foulkes celebrates the change in the street from antiques venue to high-end fashion strip mall. And that’s what it’s become, hasn’t it? How many Marc Jacobs outlets does one need to have, anyway? Or Dunhill? Actually, Foulkes was stretching a point to include Dunhill, a block or two off Mount Street in premises formerly occupied by the venerable antiques dealer Mallett, whose remaining premises in Bond Street, alas, are now also for sale.
I realize, of course, that Mr. Foulkes’ brief was to write about what might be thought current and kicky. As the author of a weekly column in the Evening Standard entitled ‘Ginger Fop’, it isn’t surprising his focus would be fashion. My dismay at the change of Mount Street from wonderful antiques venue to, well, strip mall, would be tempered if the replacement merchants were selling particularly British goods. But the focus of companies like international luxury goods retailer LVMH, whose aforementioned brand Marc Jacobs now occupies the former premises of antiques dealer Pelham Galleries, is mass marketing. This, then, begs the obvious question- why would one wish to visit Mount Street if it is indistinguishable, save the weather, from Rodeo Drive, or Michigan Avenue, for that matter?