‘It should be gay Disneyland’: the struggle to revitalise Sydney’s Oxford Street without selling its soul

Terry Daly’s Daly Male shop has operated on Oxford Street for 40 years. ‘We don’t need Louis Vuitton, we want little designers, we want independents,’ he says. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

Zink & Sons has made bespoke suits on Sydney’s Oxford Street for 130 years. For most of that time, the family-owned men’s tailoring business has resided at number 56, halfway between Hyde Park and the street’s LGBTQI heart at Taylor Square. Today its director, Daniel Jones, is looking for a new base after a rent increase he says is unaffordable.

His shop is located in a development project that has been almost six years in the making. Oxford and Foley, a commercial strip of renovated heritage buildings, has been touted as key to revitalising the storied and colourful street, bringing new retail, hospitality and creative spaces, upmarket tenants and an injection of fresh energy. Three weeks ago, Golf Wang, the much-hyped fashion store of the musician Tyler, The Creator, was the first shop to open in the refurbished section of the commercial strip.