Legendary antiques shop loved by celebs & designers is closing after 60 years on busy high street
A LEGENDARY antiques shop loved by celebrities and designers is closing after 60 years on a busy high street.
Guinevere, on London’s King’s Road, has seen the likes of Ralph Lauren, Mick Jagger, and Elton John through its doors.
But the shop is set to close on this Christmas Eve after Genevieve Weaver founded it back in 1963, the FT reports.
Weaver’s sons Marc and Kevin took over the business in the early 1980s but the pair have been forced to close the store by rising shipping costs.
They’ll now shift to selling their wares online and Guinevere will continue “in some form”.
The store has sold everything from Persian rugs, to a maharaja’s side table, to Han dynasty jars.
Genevieve died in the 2000s after buying items from around the globe.
Remembering his mother, Marc said: “She only bought what she liked. She’d say if something was ugly in the 19th century it would still be ugly in the 21st.
“Provenance and history mattered. But it had to look good. That was her number one criterion.”
Guinevere is arranged across four shops and two storeys that have never been properly connected together.
Each room has its own atmosphere but without a cohesive theme, finding mosque lamps next to mid-century furniture.
In fact, Guinevere was one of the first dealers to start selling mid-century pieces and also the currently popular Japanese Imari porcelain.
The closure comes after another antique store in Pulborough shut its doors for good at the end of February.
Like Guinevere, its owners pinned the cause for their closure also on a rise in costs.
Meanwhile Casa Fina, an independent home accessories store on High Street in Salisbury has shut its doors after 40 years.
Although Susi conceded the closure marked the end of an era, she revealed the space would be used by a new independent business.
Why are retailers closing stores?
RETAILERS have been feeling the squeeze since the pandemic, while shoppers are cutting back on spending due to the soaring cost of living crisis.
High energy costs and a move to shopping online after the pandemic are also taking a toll, and many high street shops have struggled to keep going.
The high street has seen a whole raft of closures over the past year, and more are coming.
The number of jobs lost in British retail dropped last year, but 120,000 people still lost their employment, figures have suggested.
Figures from the Centre for Retail Research revealed that 10,494 shops closed for the last time during 2023, and 119,405 jobs were lost in the sector.
It was fewer shops than had been lost for several years, and a reduction from 151,641 jobs lost in 2022.
The centre’s director, Professor Joshua Bamfield, said the improvement is “less bad” than good.
Although there were some big-name losses from the high street, including Wilko, many large companies had already gone bust before 2022, the centre said, such as Topshop owner Arcadia, Jessops and Debenhams.
“The cost-of-living crisis, inflation and increases in interest rates have led many consumers to tighten their belts, reducing retail spend,” Prof Bamfield said.
“Retailers themselves have suffered increasing energy and occupancy costs, staff shortages and falling demand that have made rebuilding profits after extensive store closures during the pandemic exceptionally difficult.”
Alongside Wilko, which employed around 12,000 people when it collapsed, 2023’s biggest failures included Paperchase, Cath Kidston, Planet Organic and Tile Giant.
The Centre for Retail Research said most stores were closed because companies were trying to reorganise and cut costs rather than the business failing.
However, experts have warned there will likely be more failures this year as consumers keep their belts tight and borrowing costs soar for businesses.
The Body Shop and Ted Baker are the biggest names to have already collapsed into administration this year.