What people are wearing in Notting Hill
Victorian crosses, Apple watches, Marks & Spencers
Notting Hill is a special place for me, as it is for many Americans. When I moved to London, I lived in a neighborhood nearby, in a little apartment at the top of a creaky old house owned by a French woman with two teenage daughters (Australian father). She stored rows of orange Hermès boxes on top of the refrigerator.
After a few weeks, I moved in with three boys in a sunny flat right off London Fields (a park in East London, now love-hated as an enclave for the creative class). But it was only a sublet and I needed somewhere to live long-term. I found a listing online, in a neighborhood called Maida Vale.
I signed the lease a few hours after I viewed the flat, which was on the tippedy-top floor of a Victorian house. It was originally built, like all the houses around it, for a single family before being chopped up into apartments sometime in the twentieth century.
I decided on it quickly because I was scared I wouldn’t have somewhere to live. But I also thought the name of the neighborhood, Maida Vale, was beautiful. Like something from Tolkien’s map of Middle-earth. The streets were too — rows of terraced white houses and the bit of canal nearby is so picturesque that they named it Little Venice. This was London, for Americans.
I lived there for two years. It became a sort of punchline in my life, not to me, but to East London culture workers I came to know, who couldn’t understand why I chose to live West, three train transfers away from the London they liked (independent radio parties, a higher chance of a latte with well-frothed milk).
On the weekends, I’d walk ten minutes to Notting Hill. One of the first times I went was with my then boyfriend, who looked a lot like 1990s Hugh Grant. We couldn’t set foot in a pub without hearing about it. I took a photo of him smiling in front of the book shop from the movie Notting Hill, which starred Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts as his American love interest.
Notting Hill and its depiction of good-looking bohemia cemented the neighborhood in the cultural imagination. So did paparazzi photos of the peerless boho blonde Sienna Miller a few years later, with her big city bag and sexy golden calves. Notting Hill is now known as a place for well-bred British people who like a little bit of life.
Last weekend, I went back to Notting Hill for the first time in a year. The idea was to do some vintage shopping at the famous market on Portobello Road (Golborne too) with my friend Ch’lita, with whom I have a sort of a life/creative yin and yang.
I put the address of the restaurant Straker’s (more on that later) into my phone’s navigation so that I wouldn't end up on the busy part of Portobello where they sell cheap ugly things.
When I get close, I walk to a bakery that serves fashionable pastries to the Notting Hill set and tourists. I sense that things have changed since my last visit — it’s very busy and two young American women are fingering tote bags and t-shirts in front of me. The pastry display is entirely empty, all sold out, even though it’s barely afternoon. I settle on a coffee.
Outside, I meet my first Notting Hill girl of the day, and I spend the rest of the afternoon rabbiting around the market, talking to a Free People pop star, a real rock and roll star, an 81-year-old and a 13-year-old.
Here they are,
Purdy
Age: 22
Occupation: Women’s health charity
Favorite spot in Notting Hill: Layla, Golden Deli, Canteen, Juicebaby
Purdy has tinsel in her hair like Mikey Madison in Anora — it’s catching the sunlight outside the bakery that’s overrun by Americans. She’s wearing all white today, which is a thing for the real ‘from around here’ sort as soon as the sun comes out in spring. “I love wearing white. I think it's such a positive color.”
She grew up in nearby Chelsea. On the style of Notting Hill lifers she says:
“I think there's quite a lot of people who have been born and bred here. It's kind of not like other places, they have a very unique personal style. It's very vibrant. They've shopped at the shops that have been here for ages.”
Claudia
Age: I forgot to ask
Occupation: Biotech student
Favorite spot in Notting Hill: Straker’s, the vintage and thrift stores
Claudia is from Barcelona and now lives around Kings Cross, so I ask if she goes to Central Saint Martins nearby. “No, oh, wow. I wish I went to CSM,” she says wistfully. She’s finishing up her master’s in biotechnology at a different university.
She says Straker’s is one of her favorite places in the neighborhood. I ask if it’s closed now — when I looked up the restaurant’s address to use it as my destination, Google told me it was “temporarily closed.” Claudia and Purdy are alarmed by this idea, and to be honest, I am too. Seemingly nothing can take down Thomas Straker, the bad boy chef who owns the place. Not a scandal around his only hiring white men to cook for him, nor the rumors that his wife kicked him out for cheating with the blunt-bobbed Princess Olympia of Greece. The flat bread’s just too good.
Albi and Zuzanna
Age: Albi gets mad when I ask
Occupation: Rock star and fashion photographer
Favorite spot in Notting Hill: The closer to Portobello the better (less touristic)
Albi and Zuzanna are soulmates, but they’re not dating. They met right here on Portobello Road a few years ago.
Albi’s played with all the rock and roll greats. We chat for like 90 seconds before he’s pulled into conversation by a friend passing by with his small granddaughter. The friend, who says he used to put on a weekly night that Albi played at, asks if Zuzanna and I also play music and where we’ve seen Albi perform. I explain that we met on the street just now.
“Well if you ever want someone to play guitar with his teeth, even with his feet, his little fingers, with his eyelashes...”
Zuzanna says she was super tired getting dressed this morning — she was on set for eleven hours yesterday — so her outfit isn’t totally up to snuff.
“I always choose, like, one impactful piece if I have no time. This is an old school Gucci, pure silk, with a very pornographic set.” I look a little closer and see what she means. A-ha!
“When I bought it, actually secondhand, the lady was like, it's not for your boyfriend’s family dinner to meet the parents.”
Albi and Zuzanna buy all sorts at the market. “I think the best is when you start at 9am on Friday,” Zuzanna says. “It's for the local people more, like Alexa Chung, Stella McCartney, all the great people that live in the area.”
Albi’s picked up hundreds of leather jackets, so many that he says I’d need a ladder to see them all in his flat. Zuzanna calls him a master of deals: “He’d buy a coffin at the market.”
“I like things. And as you get older, you just, like, carry on,” Albi says.
Albi shows me all his jewelry. It’s layered inches deep from his skin. I am a little starstruck by it, by his fast mouth. “Has this always been your thing?”
“Yeah, always. It's just an extension of me. I've always wore black.”
What advice would you give to people trying to find their style? I ask, feeling a bit like a positivity TikToker.
Albi: Don’t listen to anyone else.
Zuzanna: And don’t copy like, TikTok trends.
Albi: You know what suits you is gonna be something that is natural to you, yeah? People try and teach people to do things that they're not comfortable with. It’s bullshit. If you naturally do something, you're enthusiastic. You know, when you meet someone and you like you fancy them and go extra out of your way to do things at the beginning? You’re going, oh wow. But if you're not that enthusiastic about something, you're not going to put your passion into it.
And what’s your favorite thing you own?
Albi: I like everything. She does the same. We’ve got a big problem.
Zuzanna: I was moving house, so I sold so much stuff on Vestiaire and Vinted. And then once you actually strip down your wardrobe, you see there's no way you would get rid of some pieces.
My favorite, I think, is a blazer by Ann Demeulemeester, velvet, black velvet. Very old. I bought it in a charity shop. Someone literally dropped off, like, five different blazers by Ann Demeulemeester.
Albi is playing with one of his necklaces, like he wants to show me.
Me: That’s your favorite?
Albi: Well, that I've got on. Because it's a Victorian cross. It's 1800 and something.
Me: That's awesome. I mean, I noticed that one when you had your jingle jangle coming out [when he showed me his jewelry stack earlier…].
Zuzanna: I love that even when I talk to Albi on the phone, I can hear this clinging sound.
Me: That's like my favorite noise in the world.
Albi: Right? Yeah, I've recorded the jewelry on tracks.
Before we go our separate ways, I ask them about this guy loitering nearby in a pink shirt and purple flares, a bit like something from The Lizzie McGuire Movie. His outfit caught my eye, but he has sort of an off vibe.
Albi tells me not to talk to him.
“He’s creepy. Every time I’ve got a girl with me, he’s trying to hit on them.
He said to somebody I know the other day, to try to get a confrontation going with her: ‘If you're going to take a picture on my stall, what are you going to give me back?’
He reminds me of Silence of the Lambs.”
Lilly
Age: 25
Occupation: Model and singer
Favorite spot in Notting Hill: Holland Park, Reformation, Guillam’s for matcha
Lilly moved to Notting Hill from Germany six months ago.
Her shoes are from Loro Piana and her dress is from her favorite brand, Free People. “It's my favorite because it makes it feel like a fairy. Everything is so perfect.”
Has living in Notting Hill changed her style?
“No. I’ve had my same style since I was very young. I found myself very early. Very light, and I like to move with the wind a bit. Always natural materials. I like things that don’t feel like you’re wearing anything.”
For shopping in the neighborhood, she loves Reformation.
“Everything is recycled. The quality is so good.”
Margaret
Age: 81
Favorite thing about Notting Hill: The diversity
Margaret’s from Ireland, but she’s lived in Notting Hill for 25 years. I spot her red shoes and stop her to tell her I like them when she passes by me a second time.
“They're that American company.” She can’t think of the name. “Oh, they have a shop in High Street. American Apparel, or something.”
I tell her they’re not in business anymore, but their stuff’s really good quality. The rest of her outfit is from M&S and Zara.
Here’s Margaret on finding your look:
“It just takes time. I absolutely didn’t know what to wear, what colors to wear, and then all of a sudden it happens.”
We take one photo and then she says that she should probably make sure her handbag is in the shot, it’s got the Union Jack on it.
Mia
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Favorite spot in Notting Hill: Not from around here
Mia made the trip into London today to have a look around the market (she bought a little top and a little jacket), with her super sweet boyfriend. He says loads of people have stopped her to compliment her outfit.
She’s into Y2K and vintage, and does most of her shopping on Vinted, at Urban Outfitters and sometimes the charity shops. Her look today is her go to for the summer — a little mini skirt and leg warmers.
Her advice on finding your style?
“Probably like, looking on Pinterest and stuff. That's what I did a lot.”
Athena
Age: 24
Occupation: Art curation master’s student
Favorite spot in Notting Hill: She’s American so I forget to ask
Like Margaret, Athena’s use of the color red excites me. So when I see her a second time by the tent where I’m flipping through bedroom tank tops, I stop her.
She tells me she knows who I am. And so the flaneur is flaneuered…
The red skirt that I noticed, which she thinks is technically a half-piece of lingerie, is from a thrift store in Northampton, where Smith College is.
Her bag, a Louis Vuitton, was a Christmas gift. “This is definitely, like, my school bag. It's my biggest bag that I have. It's kind of unnecessarily large.” Her argyle socks were also a Christmas gift, from her mom.
Red and yellow together is so fresh.
Cece and Ophelia
Age: 13 and 14
Occupation: School
Favorite spot in Notting Hill: Blank Street Coffee (“we love our Blank Street”) and Kicks Cafe (coffee and vintage shop)
Cece and Ophelia are London girls, they grew up right here in Notting Hill. I see groups like them around the market. They all walk the way city kids do — way chiller than everyone else, just cooler.
Cece is wearing jeans with the Stussy logo in white stencil across the back pockets. “They’re actually hers,” — Ophelia’s. “Like, everything I'm wearing is hers.”
Ophelia says her necklace is vintage Juicy Couture. I had a bunch just like it when I was her age, fresh from Nordstrom and eBay charm bracelet sellers. On her inspiration when getting dressed, she says, “I feel like I just see outfits that I like on TikTok and I try to recreate them.”
They just bought matching earrings at the market — heart-shaped lollipops made of resin.
I ask how they’d describe the style in Notting Hill.
“One that I notice is like street wear, but also like, boss bitch.”
What does that mean?
“Just like, them owning it.”
Later, when I retire from my beat to shop, I see a tall girl walking down Portobello with an “I live here” stride. A very I live here outfit too – trackies worn at the hip and what looks like a tank-top bodysuit. Some cool Adidas. She stops to look at some records and I get a better look at her. It’s Phoebe Philo’s daughter.
best place on earth 😭
The silk piece from Gucci is so dope, it fits the punk aesthetic in an unexpected way