From Mayfair to Shoreditch, a London Design Guide

Check into the London Edition. With your Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive card, you can earn 12X AAdvantage® miles on eligible AAdvantage Hotels® bookings. “The hotel was the backdrop to some of my first days in London,” Walton says, “and I’ll always associate it with that dreamy, jet-lagged haze. It’s dark and atmospheric, but never cold.”

Spend the morning at the National Portrait Gallery, Walton’s favorite museum in the city and one she calls a must-see every visit. Reopened in 2023 after a three-year, $53-million renovation, the gallery now runs chronologically across six centuries of British life, from Holbein’s Tudor court through to a wall of contemporary faces from activists to models.

Look for the Chandos portrait, a painting of Shakespeare and the only likeness of him with a credible claim to have been painted from life, and the cast-bronze doors, representing every woman through time, at the new Ross Place entrance. Admission is free—budget at least 90 minutes, though with such an extensive collection, you might find yourself wanting more.

From there, head to Bentley & Skinner in Mayfair for antique jewelry. A committed vintage shopper, Walton also recommends the jeweler’s “beautiful” original pieces.

Round out the day with two more of Walton’s picks. Stephen Jones Millinery is the atelier of Stephen Jones, a milliner honored by the Order of the British Empire whose hats have crowned royalty and pop stars. Dover Street Market, Rei Kawakubo and Adrian Joffe’s genre-bending concept store, stages fashion more like a series of rotating art installations than a typical shop floor.

Dinner is at Mountain, chef Tomos Parry’s wood-fired room in Soho, where Basque cooking meets his Welsh roots—the lobster caldereta, a rich shellfish stew designed to be shared, is the dish regulars come back for.

Walton loves visiting Shoreditch on the weekend for vintage shopping. “I always start by popping into Labour and Wait and buying something for my house,” she says, “followed by vintage shopping in the area, while slowly winding my way up to the flower market on Columbia Road.”

Labour and Wait occupies a green-tiled former pub on Redchurch Street and has been selling handsome, built-to-last goods since 2000. Think Falcon enamelware, Redecker brushes, canvas workwear, and the kind of hardware-store basics that look like they were pulled from a 1950s film set.

From there, work through the racks at Storm in a Teacup and Nordic Poetry, two of the neighborhood’s most tightly edited vintage stops. Time your visit for a Sunday and head to Columbia Road Flower Market (8 a.m. to roughly 3 p.m., Sundays only). Stallholders call out their wares as you go, and some 60 independent shops line the street itself, selling everything from antiques to vintage clothing alongside the flowers.

Stop for a glass at Sager + Wilde before lunch at Rochelle Canteen, a restaurant tucked into a former school bike shed that you reach by buzzing an unmarked door. Inside, a glass-walled dining room and a garden complement a seasonal menu that changes daily. Your meal may include smoked cod’s roe, braised squid with fennel and aioli, and a grilled lamb leg with romesco, finished with a sticky date pudding when it’s on the menu.

For dinner, go to Dalla. Walton, who lived in Italy and knows a great pasta when she sees one, is a fan of the restaurant. An intimate corner spot in Hackney, its mid-century Italian design—a Stilnovo chandelier sourced from a Milanese palazzo, a bathroom mirror attributed to Gio Ponti—sets the scene for an ever-changing menu of home-style regional dishes. You can try handmade pastas like gnudi or orecchiette, a cuttlefish-and-chickpea salad, and tiramisu.

Start at the Simone Rocha flagship boutique on Mount Street, a store Walton always loves visiting in London. Then walk through Hyde Park on your way south. It’s one of London’s largest royal parks, with the Serpentine lake at its center and Speakers’ Corner at its northeast edge, a 20-minute detour worth making on a clear day.

From there, continue to the V&A, one of the world’s top museums for applied and decorative arts, where Walton launched her book earlier this year. Stop for tea and cake in the museum’s Gamble Room, part of the world’s first museum restaurant. The ornately tiled Victorian hall opened in 1868 and reads like a grand European café.

Close the trip with dinner at Ognisko, the Polish restaurant in South Kensington where Walton went after her book signing. It’s set inside the Polish Hearth Club, a Victorian townhouse granted Grade II listing—England’s protected-landmark status for buildings of special historic interest—and founded in 1940 as a wartime gathering place for Polish émigrés and diplomats. The kitchen still serves the classics: pierogi, blinis piled with caviar, duck confit with braised red cabbage, and a well-stocked list of flavored vodkas to go with it.

The historic restaurant and its traditional cuisine are a fitting close to a weekend spent among London’s makers. Toast to the milliners, jewelers, and designers—and chefs—keeping the city’s craft traditions alive.