What luxury shops offer

 This week I visited Fortnum & Mason and had a look at Burlington Arcade, Piccadilly.

Fortnum & Mason

 Fortnum & Mason (F&M) is mainly known for selling their teas and sweets in my country, but here it is a luxury department store, established in 1707. Their story began as Hugh Mason met the Fortnum family, who came from Oxford to London after the Great Fire as high-class builders. William Fortnum, one of the family, took a post as footman in Queen Anne’s household and the room at Mr Mason’s. The Royal Family insisted on having a new candle every night, which left a lot of half-used wax, which William took as a chance to sell, as a sideline business that ended in grocery. As for teas, F&M had a connection with East India Tea Company, a famous company which became a combination of a trade company and administrative agency. That makes sense why it has a variety of teas. As it’s known for fancy teas and luxurious hampers, F&M invented Scotch Egg; nowadays, everyone knows.

 Back to luxury goods, not only selling tinned loose-leaf tea, F&M offers their bespoke tea blending service. You can see a counter on the ground floor; there are a lot of large tins which are painted in their signature blue-green colour, the Eau de Nil, and staff, “Tearistas”, as they call them, who willingly help you create your own unique tea. They can customise the combination of tea leaves based on your tea preferences, from leaf type and flavour profile to intensity, and even time of day you may have. Speaking of the colour, you can see the Eau de Nil colour in every product in the store, such as, of course, tea boxes, coffee tins and tea sets. They collaborated with Spode, a ceramic brand founded in 1770 which successfully established a method of manufacturing blue and white ceramics, and alongside Spode’s fine ceramics, F&M offers Spode 1770 Black teaware, made exclusively for them, adorned with soft visuals of pastoral scenes mingled with a unique pattern and 22-carat gold detailing, which offers you a time of luxury tea time.

Burlington Arcade

 Then I made a brief visit to Burlington Arcade, which is located a few minutes away from F&M. The arcade is fashioned in an elegant, posh aura; guards adorned in the classic, fancy hat and coat, a customer enjoying their coffee while his leather shoes are neatly polished by a shoeblack. Ladurée has a unique interior like a cave of gold mine and a bespoke jewellery shop whose door is closed until a client arrives there. Most of the shops there are not seen in a mundane high street; they open for their exclusive customers, offering high-quality products made with fine materials and services. Even just walking down the arcade, I felt the shops stare at me as if only welcoming those who understand and appreciate the luxury they offer.

 In conclusion, the two differnt places offer each own luxuries to the customers. For F&M, they focus on teas and teawares rather than clothes and shoes. In contrast, there are fine shoemakers and a jewellery shop, along beautiful clothes in Burlington Arcade. Their aims are different so that I think they influence each other, encouraging delivering a wide range of luxury goods to customers.