For London’s fashion-aware in 1970, South Molton Street was just a shortcut through dull Mayfair from Selfridges in Oxford Street to the Fenwick store in Bond Street. And then Joan Burstein, with her husband, Sidney, acquired No 27, an 18th-century row house, from Sir William Pigott-Brown, and kept his name for their clothes store. Over the next 50 years, much of South Molton Street became the empire of Browns.
The Bursteins pioneered an approach to retail that we would now call “curation”. Designers in other countries were already producing prêt-à-porter, and gifted young British talents were making experimental collections, so there was excellent potential stock.
