Shutting Up Shop - National Portrait Gallery

Shutting up Shop is currently exhibited in the basement of the National Portrait gallery. Lush photos, shot on a large format camera, from a book of the same title show small shops when they were in business and after. Perhaps because it was raining outside, perhaps because a gallery attendant reprimanded me for taking this picture, it left me a bit melancholy.

The National Portrait Gallery
2 St. Martin's Pl
London, WC2H 0HE
020 73122490

Museum of Childhood - Bethnal Green

Toy shopfronts from the 1900s to the 1980s. Play shopping has trained children early for at least 100 years.

The V & A - South Kensington

Just visiting the exhibits at the Victoria and Albert museum is a form of shopping. I suppose you could call it window shopping, or as the French say "licking the windows." It's such a giant warehouse of fashion for the home and body, that I am seriously skeptical of those who say they can see everything in one day.

If shopping is only satisfying if you actually lay out some money, visit the V&A gift shop. It sells the requisite postcards, note cards, and history, art and design books, but it's also a nice representative of good British design. Whether your preference is Urban Outfitters or Harrods you can find clothes, accessories and nick knacks to suit your taste. I still regret not buying a purse I saw there a couple of years ago. I don't remember the designer, but it was made of many different labels sewn together, similar to the technique Fake of London uses. "I'll find it online," I thought, trying to be fiscally responsible for once in my life. Sadly, it was not available online. It was one of a kind. I lost my chance to support the arts and to own a thing of beauty.

Victoria and Albert Museum
Cromwell Road
London SW7 2RL
020 7942 2000