Vogue - London Welcomes a New Press Primrose Hill Boutique By Mark Holgate

By Mark Holgate, Fashion News Director, Vogue

Back in the day, habitués of north London’s village-like Primrose Hill fell out of the area’s bars in various bohemian ensembles and in various states of (dis)repair. Now when they’re socializing, as they did Monday night at the official welcome for the new location of Melanie Press’s boutique, Press Primrose Hill (the old one was just around the corner), they’ve just come from the nearby FaceGym, and are downing hemp and rose tea, or cocktails made with the likes of fermented hibiscus or sea buckthorn, courtesy of the Herball.

Press cohosted the party with fellow local and friend Sadie Frost, whose yoga line Frost London is about the same age—a few months—as Press’s new shop. (If the label isn’t enough to keep Frost busy, she has signed on to direct her first documentary, on Mary Quant.) Many of the guests—who included Serena Rees and Frost’s daughter Iris Law, who’d just landed in from Tokyo—wore Press’s own collection, with her Sonnet dress featuring strongly. But one game reveler stripped down to her Frost London kit, and struck a few poses. Old habits die hard.