Big fashion labels flock to revitalised Victoria in central London as civil servants move out

 
Optimistic: Coffee shop owner Jodie Whitelaw
Alex Lentati
10 February 2014

A £4 billion makeover of the once grey “Government and God” quarter around Victoria station is attracting some of the world’s most famous labels, including Jimmy Choo, Giorgio Armani, Burberry and Tom Ford.

Over the next decade, £2 billion will be spent on office developments — mainly by dominant landlord Land Securities — with a similar amount on improved infrastructure, particularly around Victoria station, according to a major report unveiled tonight.

The unlikely fashion credentials of an area better known for civil servants than cutting-edge designers were confirmed at the weekend when new glossy magazine Porter chose Victoria station — and New York’s Grand Central station — for a global launch.

Earlier this month, Giorgio Armani became the latest big couture name to confirm that it was moving its UK headquarters from Brompton Road to Howick Place later this year.

New world: Land Securities' huge Nova development outside Victoria station

The first stage of the extraordinary overhaul, which has been compared to the reinvention of King’s Cross, is expected to be completed by the autumn when the above-ground work on modernising and expanding Victoria Tube station is completed.

Ruth Duston, who heads the Victoria Business Improvement District and is presenting the Victoria Vibrancy Report, said that by 2016 “people will start to see a real transformation, a noticeable difference”.

Victoria was “very much” looking to compete with neighbouring areas, with office rents half the price of Mayfair and property prices less than half those of Knightsbridge and Belgravia.

In another sign of the pace of change, its first Antipodean artisan coffee shop is opening next month. New Zealander Jodie Whitelaw said she had planned to set up Iris & June — named after her grandmothers — in Bloomsbury or Holborn but fell in love with the area around Victoria.

Whitelaw, 33, said: “There’s a real energy and optimism about the area, it’s really bustling. I felt the people I saw were the sort of people who understand and appreciate what we do and would like the shop.”

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Government departments are being moved away from the area and Victoria station’s fast connections to Gatwick are fuelling the revival.

Cake maker Peggy Porschen said 80 per cent of the students in classes at her baking and sugar craft academy in Elizabeth Street were from abroad, with her shop a fixture on the “cake tourism” circuit.

Lady Lucy French, development director at the St James Theatre near Buckingham Gate, said friends told her she was “mad” to set up in Victoria in 2012 but office workers were now flocking to short lunchtime productions.

She said: “They can come with a sandwich and watch The Importance of Being Earnest in 45 minutes.”

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