After a day at the markets yesterday, I decided to hit the stores today. I took the tube down to Knightsbridge station, where I made the inevitable stop at Harrods – the world’s most famous department store. It was love at first sight for me! I especially love the food basement – its range of chocoloates alone was enough to set any choc-addict on high, me included! After picking up a couple of charming souvenirs for mummy dearest, I took a walk along Brompton Road and had fun popping in and out of shops that caught my fancy.

I nipped into H&M since it’s not to be found anywhere in Asia. I also went into Jigsaw, Karen Millen, Zara, a shoe-shop called Walk and a huge Accessorize store where I acquired quite a few dazzling trinkets. I walked until I hit Sloane Street, another popular fashion shopping street. Here’s where you can find the likes of Tods, Jimmy Choo, Dior, Fendi, Gucci and Kenneth Cole. Here, I did quick window-shopping only as I was in a hurry to check out Kings Road which I have heard so much about – particularly about its hip and trendy ways back in the swinging sixties.

I finally got to Kings Road, the nerve centre for the counterculture in the mid-sixties. Although now gentrified, it is still is one of London’s better shopping streets. I spotted the glass façade of the Peter Jones shop, well-known as one of the first glass-curtain structures up in Britain. Coming from Asia and surrounded by ultra-modern skyscrapers, I especially find appealing the rich history and culture of this shopping street. Each shop seems to weave a tale of its own which you would want to enter and unravel, in addition to appreciating its wares. To me, this makes for more a meaningful shopping experience.

I certainly enjoyed the visit to the site where the mini-skirt revolution started, being a big fan of it myself. It was also here that punk in the seventies was born it seems and, guess what, apparently Vivienne Westwood’s clothes store ‘Sex’ had a big part in it too, something I only learnt when there. Oh, there’re also scores of great antique shops here if you’re into that and I couldn’t resist popping into Habitat to see if I could find something for my home.

King’s Road today is still chic, peppered with smaller fashion shops that help you to push the boundaries of fashion, to cast to the wind all previous fashion conventions you might have, and to try something different for the heck of it. People-watching’s my other favourite pastime here; London’s so cosmopolitan you’d never know whom you might chance upon.