London's Soho and Dover Street Market: A Streetwear Guide

In 1957 a fire burned out John Stephen's menswear shop on Beak Street, and he moved around the corner to 5 Carnaby Street. He called the new place His Clothes. By 1967 he ran 15 shops on the same street, the papers called him the King of Carnaby Street, and the narrow lane behind Regent Street had become one of the most famous shopping streets in the world. Almost seventy years on, the blocks around it still hold one of London's best runs of menswear and streetwear, and a short walk south sits the store that changed what a fashion shop could look like.

Carnaby and the first menswear boom

Carnaby Street is older than its reputation. It takes its name from Karnaby House, built nearby in 1683, and it was laid out a couple of years later and filled with small houses by 1690. For most of its life it was a modest Soho back street.

Stephen changed that. He spotted the young menswear market of the late 1950s before almost anyone, and he dressed it. Mods came first, then the hippie and peacock styles of the late 1960s, and stars of the beat boom wore his clothes. On April 15, 1966, Time magazine put the street in its Swinging London coverage, and the same year the Kinks released Dedicated Follower of Fashion, a song that sent the whole scene up. The Greater London Council pedestrianized Carnaby Street in October 1973.

The fall was quick. Stephen closed his last business in 1975, and the street drifted toward souvenir shops for tourists. He died in 2004, and a year later Westminster City Council put up a green plaque in his honor at 1 Carnaby Street. For another story of clothing that young people took over and made their own, read our history of the MA-1 bomber jacket.

The Soho streetwear grid

Modern Soho streetwear grew in the same few streets. Footpatrol, the sneaker shop that has traded since 2002, sits on Berwick Street. Supreme arrived in London in 2011 and keeps its shop on Peter Street. Palace, the London skate brand whose rise we chart in our history of Palace Skateboards, set up on Brewer Street in 2015. END. is on Broadwick Street, Cole Buxton joined the area on Marshall Street in 2020, and Golf Wang has a shop on Beak Street, the same street where Stephen's first business burned. Soho's own visitor guide to streetwear lists most of them.

The geography explains a lot. The streets are short, the shops are small and everything is within ten minutes on foot, so a release at one store sends a crowd past three others. That is the same density that made Fairfax Avenue work for a decade, which we cover in our Los Angeles Fairfax guide, and the same weekly scarcity logic we unpack in Supreme and the drop model.

Dover Street Market, the beautiful chaos

Dover Street Market opened on September 10, 2004, at 17 to 18 Dover Street in Mayfair, a building that had once housed the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Its founders were Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons and her husband, Adrian Joffe. The model was the old Kensington Market, a warren of independent stalls under one roof, and Kawakubo described the result as a kind of beautiful chaos.

In March 2016 the store moved to Haymarket, into the building Thomas Burberry put up in 1912, between Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square. It is a short walk from Soho, and it is worth doing in the same day. The format has since traveled to Ginza, New York, Singapore, Beijing, Los Angeles and, in May 2024, the Marais in Paris. If you are heading there, our Le Marais style guide covers the neighborhood around it. The London store has a Rose Bakery café, as do several of its siblings, a concept created by Rose Carrarini and her husband, Jean Charles.

If the clothes on the Comme floors are new to you, start with our profile of Rei Kawakubo and Comme des Garçons. You will understand the building better once you understand her.

How to walk it

Start at Oxford Circus, walk south down Regent Street and turn left into the Carnaby grid. Work through Beak, Broadwick, Marshall and Berwick Streets, then cut down through Soho to Brewer and Peter Streets. From there it is a ten-minute walk to Haymarket for Dover Street Market. If you have time for tailoring, our Savile Row guide is on the other side of Regent Street.

Go on a weekday morning if you can. Release days at the bigger brands bring lines and sometimes raffles, and each brand sets its own rules, so check their sites and social accounts the week you travel. Shops in Soho move and close often. Treat every store named here as worth checking before you go.

More in our streetwear and luxury fashion coverage, our city guides and the full Travel section.

Before you leave Carnaby, find the green plaque at No. 1. It is small and easy to miss, a modest memorial for the man who turned this street into a byword for menswear.