When I decided to visit Portobello market on a blustery bank holiday Friday, I was open minded and excited. My only point of reference so far was Hugh Grant’s Notting Hill and a brief memory of Geri Halliwell buying her infamous union jack dress there in the nineties.
The streets have traits of Glastonbury festival, with its rich cosmopolitan influences, incense burning and independent stores. It’s refreshing not to see a H and M or Topshop and enter into a world that advocates originality, English eccentricity and style. Portobello road oozes it from every nook and cranny.
The market offers countless stalls that sell everything from exotic jewellery, ex military jackets and intricately painted pottery. The place has an amazing sense of self about it, and is somewhere you really want to dive in and be a part of.
Of course, there are the scensters, the trendies and the yuppies, who might I add have latched on to this plastic coloured sunglasses trend a little too hard. I counted at least seven of its victims on a twenty-metre stretch.But then there are the locals, the stall holders, and the people running the kids club at the church. These are the people that make a place like Notting Hill great. They bring a collaboration of races, cultures, ages and classes, bringing the global eateries, amazing collections of dusty records and vintage clothes. They made this a place the scensters want to be seen in and the tourists want to visit, and what a big mish mash of a place it really is. But, gosh, didn’t they do a good job
