Celine Set to Open on London’s Luxury Hotspot: New Bond Street

The label will join Loewe, Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga on the hot Mayfair strip.

LONDON — LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton is sliding its brands like chess pieces into key positions on New Bond Street, one of Mayfair’s hottest properties, with Celine the latest name set to move there next year.

Celine will open shop next door to fellow LVMH brand Loewe, which is located at 41-42 New Bond Street, and its luxury neighbors will include Ermenegildo Zegna, Alaïa, Smythson, Chloé, Ralph Lauren and Delvaux.

The property, at 39-40 New Bond, belongs to LVMH, and until January of this year the space had housed a Louis Vuitton store. A few minutes’ walk away is the Louis Vuitton flagship, which re-opened last year after a major refurbishment overseen by architect Peter Marino.

A spokeswoman for Celine confirmed the New Bond opening, and added that the brand’s nearby Mount Street location, which made its debut in 2014, would not close. The Mount Street store was refurbished last year by Hedi Slimane in brutalist style. Slimane put a similar spin on the Celine’s first men’s wear store, which opened last year on Old Bond Street.

The opening of the 3,240-square-feet Celine store on Mount Street in the spring of 2014 was a milestone for the former creative director Phoebe Philo. Celine’s only U.K. store had closed in 2009, shortly after she took the creative helm of the brand and began a meticulous makeover that involved overhauling all product lines and shuttering almost a third of the company’s directly operated stores.

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The Mount Street location boasts 79 feet of frontage, and its opening was the first in a wave of 15 new stores for the brand.

There is no stopping the fashion momentum on New Bond Street, which is already the most expensive shopping thoroughfare in Europe and the third most expensive worldwide, after Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay and upper Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. According to Cushman & Wakefield’s annual survey of the most expensive shopping streets, rents on New Bond were $1,714 per square foot per year in the second quarter of 2019.

Earlier this month, it was reported that Kering-owned Balenciaga would move into the current Russell & Bromley shoe store space on the corner of New Bond Street and Conduit streets. Balenciaga declined all comment.

In February, Trophaeum Asset Management, which owns most of Albemarle Street, other properties on Bond Street and chunks of prime space around London, purchased a 15,000-square-foot retail block on New Bond from a firm controlled by the banker Joseph Safra.

Trophaeum paid 130 million pounds for the building, which currently houses Halcyon Gallery on the ground floor, and “the location has great potential for a future fashion maison,” said Matt Farrell, managing director at Trophaeum. “The Halcyon Gallery is situated in what has become the new prime pitch on Bond Street for luxury fashion brands.”

Brunello Cucinelli is also preparing a move to New Bond Street, while Versace is set to open a unit in what is now the Bally flagship, on the corner of New Bond and Maddox streets. The new Versace store, which is set to open later this year, will span 7,244 square feet, and offer a full selection of men’s and women’s ready-to-wear and accessories over three floors.

Canali, meanwhile, has signed a new 10-year lease for a site on the corner of New Bond Street and Brook Street that will span 5,014 square feet over three floors.