Monkey business in the UK

A shopping holiday during Chinese New Year included special by-appointment services in Bond Street, hints of fashion-week excitement and plenty of Year of the Monkey goodies, Mike Peters discovers.

I'm not sure if Emma Thompson, one of my favorite film stars, got a monkey cookie when she popped into the Stella McCartney flagship store in London recently.

My little group touring the shop did, though.

And as we munched on the red-and-gold Lunar New Year treat, Thompson slipped quietly down the stairs from the VIP room, where she'd been examining a few pieces that had been chosen for her to examine by appointment, at her leisure with a glass of champagne and lots of happy banter.

You don't need to be an award-winning actress to get such treatment, though it's helpful to have a fat bank account.

The By Appointment program provides customized itineraries to give travelers "the ultimate London luxury experience", and last year the program expanded in big ways to reach out to Chinese tourists who come to shop. Private shopping can include after-hours access, trunk shows and exclusive previews, hands-free shopping and a chauffeur.

Bond Street is home to over 130 luxury retailers, elegant boutiques, exclusive brands, designer fashion and bespoke goods. Many stores already had staff on hand that could speak Mandarin or Cantonese, but the new program delivered a carefully curated experience to anticipate the needs and desires of individual Chinese customers.

Organizers say Bond Street is the top destination for Chinese shoppers with China representing 23 percent of total international spending on the street with an average transaction of 1,450 pounds ($2,000).

While the traditional image of a Bond Street merchant is a veteran tailor who looks vaguely like Sir John Gielgud, I wanted to visit a broad mix of shops and artisans since I was looking for a good story instead of an expensive suit.

Which is why I'm now staring at ladies' shoes so amazing that I've almost forgotten the monkey-shaped cookie I was given on arrival at Stella McCartney.

The shoes are mounted on high-platform soles. The undersides are serrated like shark's teeth. I've seen them - they have become a McCartney signature - but never touched one.

"Not sold on it?" says store manager Joanna Pitt with a big grin.

"Don't worry, you're not the first. When Stella first came out with these, everybody went 'Wha-a-a-a-at?' But she dragged all of her friends in here to buy them, and now some come back every season for the newest design. Now it's probably our best-seller."

Our champagne tour includes walking through the delightful children's room, where the animal motifs and creative colors come to life for kids while mommy shops. We're also introduced to some of Stella's pet causes, including the store's Meatless Mondays and luxuriant faux furs. No animal ever suffers for fashion's sake here.

Our Bond Street adventure had started at another unlikely spot for a 50-plus male tourist: Floris, the perfumer who has an exclusive royal warrant to provide soaps and scents for Britain's most exclusive family. Edward Bodenham, the seventh-generation owner in the Floris family of shopkeepers, does his work in a cocoon of mahogany wood and glass, where apothecary jars, century-old scales and weights, and a flotilla of pretty bottles and scent strips have pride of place.

"Modern perfumery is based on weight, on grams," he says, "but we still measure out by hand, with a lot of trial and error, in old-fashioned glassware.

"The idea that perfume is for women is fairly new," he says, noting that the shop's fabled customers include James Bond creator Ian Fleming and Britain's wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill. Orders by Churchill and his wife, who had separate accounts here, are carefully recorded by hand in a fine leather volume behind his desk. There is a framed receipt from Admiral Wilson, dated 1810.

"Many of our classic scents are coming back for both men and women," he says.

One of the most durable in the Floris line is Lime, so unisex it's the preferred potion for shower gels and soaps at some of London's most exclusive hotels.

"Of course, back in the 1700s and for a good while thereafter, we made scents much stronger than we do today. People didn't bathe as much then," he chuckles, "so everybody needed a bit of scent if they were going to be social."

Spritzing paper strips as he talks, Bodenham says he walks customers through "families" of scent - floral, citrus, woodsy, Oriental - to see what scents they identify with.

"It can be hard to put smells into words," he says, "but we each have a memory bank of smells, that we identify with our childhood and our experiences in life." You might embrace citrus because it recalls orange trees you loved on your grandfather's farm, he says, or you may avoid a scent because "you don't want to smell like your parents".

When Bodenham visited Shanghai and Chengdu two years ago for British Showcase, he found eager buyers for the scents of cherry blossom and rose geranium, the latter also a favorite of the late movie icon Marilyn Monroe.

He won't tell us what might be in the queen's medicine cabinet, but he says the royals generally don't demand bespoke products.

"They tend to use what we have in the range," he says.

Sometimes those are products that were created for the palace long ago.

"We still keep one mouthwash formula in the store, even though mouthwash isn't what we're about anymore. But the palace still likes it, so we have it."

Our shopping tour proceeds to Mulberry, with leather handbags so popular in China that the brand launched them on the Chinese-language micro-blog platform Weibo in 2013. Johnny Coca, the label's relatively new creative director, is eager to broaden Mulberry's ready-to-wear line and plans some surprises in the upcoming fashion-week shows.

At the immense Liberty department store, we get lost in fabrics, in wonderful rugs, in the chocolate boutique - and we come back later for haircuts at the store's old-fashioned barber shop, Murdock, where straight razors and shaving brushes aren't just for decoration. Unlike in Churchill's day, however, a "luxury Murdock wet shave" (55 pounds) now comes with a facial.

"A lot of customers looking for a traditional cut are not so young," says barber Marshall Darling.

"But we get a lot of guys from the film and arts industries - between about 28 and 40 - who want to be very stylish and have a quality cut."

Contact the writer at michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn

More than stores

In a holiday centered around two days of high-end shopping, there wasn't a lot of time for sightseeing. We got a quick fix by spending a morning at The Shard, the 95-story skyscraper that offers a birds-eye view of the UK capital's most iconic landmarks. Since before Lunar New Year, social media users in China have been able to get a glimpse of the breathtaking vista on their tablets and smartphones.

The Shard has also produced a fun online video for Weibo and WeChat that introduces users to the Jade Emperor and his wife, Queen of Heaven. The royal couple are busily preparing their Chinese New Year festivities - however, the naughty Monkey King has stolen all of their delicious dumplings meant for the New Year feast and escaped to London. Those who play the game to recover the dumplings can see a virtual 360-degree panorama of London from the top of The Shard.

Two other ways to see London's top sights in a short time: Take a river cruise on the Thames, with a day ticket that allows you to get off at the Tower of London and other sites if you want a quick look. London's famous red tour buses also have hop-on, hop-off options for do-it-yourself sightseeing, with audio guides in many languages including, of course, Chinese.