Celine New Bond Street

The location of 40 New Bond Street in London’s Mayfair area has a rich history. It is a Grade II^* listed Edwardian building situated at the heart of the Mayfair Conservation Area within the prestigious City of Westminster, one of London’s thirty-two boroughs.

The Mayfair Conservation Area, so designated in 1969, originated in the mid-17^th century and was developed throughout the 18^th, 19th, and 20^th centuries. Its expansion culminated in a diverse array of architectural styles, characterized by buildings in the Queen Anne, Italianate, Neo-Georgian, Neoclassical and Modernist genres. The area’s historic significance resides in its nearly 700 listed buildings, and its registered garden centerpieces, Grosvenor Square and Berkeley Square, originally renowned for their green spaces and surrounding majestic townhouse residences.

Bond Street itself is steeped in history, having been developed by Sir Thomas Bond in the 1720’s to become a focal point of large and prestigious estates owned by aristocrats and wealthy socialites. By the end of the 18^th century, it became Mayfair’s hub of social activity and home to auction houses, galleries, and upmarket fashion retailers. By the 19^th century, the street’s reputation as a prominent luxury shopping destination became well established. Considered one of the most expensive strips of real estate in Europe with the highest density of haute couture stores in the world, Bond Street’s reputation endures to this day.

The site of 40 New Bond Street was developed by prominent architects. In the early 1900’s Edward Keynes Purchase installed the original curved shopfront and decorated the interior of the site’s three main retail spaces, and in the 1960’s Raymond Erith designed the rear rooms, including the Oval Room, the Anglo-Palladian Room, and the Italian styled Octagonal Grotto. 

Successive high-end tenants, from the antique dealers Mallett & Son to the stationers Smythson, to the luxury retailer Louis Vuitton, contributed to the evolving interior decoration of the site. The most recent occupant, CELINE, has taken the site’s interior design to new heights all while preserving the detailing of the various periods and integrating the historic fabric of the listed building’s interior with a contemporary and exquisitely chic artistic design. 

Under the meticulous direction and artistic genius of Hedi Slimane, the CELINE brand has come to be recognized for its iconic display of evocative artworks amid strikingly modern, unconventional furnishings, curated from the brand’s vintage collections and Slimane’s own designs. A total of sixteen art pieces that form part of the CELINE Art Project, decorate the flagship. Sculptures from such eclectic artists, as the Ugandan Leilah Babirye, the Russian, Nika Neelova, the Danish, Marie Lund, the British, David Nash, the American, Mel Kendrick, and the Canadian, Lukas Geronimas punctuate the retail space. 

The 8,500 square feet flagship is replete with rich materials, featuring veiny black marble floors, mirror-paneled walls, granite surfaces, natural wood and travertine shelving, recessed strip lighting, as well as polished stainless steel and brass. CELINE’s Haute Parfumerie is displayed in the original octagonal room, providing both contrast and continuity to the space’s panorama of subtle tones and textures.