Oxford Street - Shopping

Shopping

Oxford Street is home to a number of major department stores and numerous flagship stores, as well as hundreds of smaller shops. It is the biggest shopping street within Inner London, and though not necessarily the most expensive or fashionable, is considered to be the most important, and forms part of a larger shopping district with Regent Street, Bond Street and a number of other smaller nearby streets.

For many British retail chains their Oxford Street branch is regarded as their 'flagship' store. Major stores on the street include:

• Debenhams, the flagship of the national department store chain. Formerly Marshall & Snelgrove, renamed in 1973 after being rebuilt. The original Debenham & Freebody store was in nearby Wigmore Street
• HMV, the music retailer has three stores on the street including a concession within Selfridges and its shop at 150 Oxford Street, which is Europe's largest music shop at 50,000 square feet (5,000 m2)
• House of Fraser, the London flagship of the national department store chain. The store traded as D H Evans until 2000. It is located in an art-deco building completed in 1935; the first department store in the UK to include escalators serving every floor
• John Lewis, the third-largest department store in the UK and flagship of the John Lewis chain, opened in 1864
• Marks & Spencer. Marks & Spencer Marble Arch, largest Marks & Spencer store of 170,000 square feet (16,000 m2) at the junction of Oxford Street and Orchard Street. A second branch between Regent Street and Tottenham Court Road stands on the site of the famous Pantheon building. Its fine polished black granite frontage completed in 1938 was awarded Grade II Listed Building status in September 2009.
• Selfridges, the second-largest department store in the UK and flagship of the Selfridges chain, it has been on this site for over a century
• Topshop