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Camden New Journal - by SUNITA RAPPAI
Published: 12 July 2007

Sally Gee pictured in her Hutton clothes shop

Landmark clothes shop to close its doors

ONE of Camden Town’s first fashion shops has closed its doors for the last time, blaming rocketing rents and a rise in the “wrong sort of tourist” for its demise.
Hutton, which was set up by owner Sally Gee in 1973, ceased trading earlier this month. The fashion boutique was originally located in Camden High Street and moved to Chalk Farm Road 22 years ago.
Ms Gee, from Hampstead, said that a steady rise in rents and rates combined with an increasingly “tatty” shopping strip and aggressive parking restrictions had dented profits and kept customers away.
She said: “I had a big rent increase and the whole of the parade down there has just changed. It has become tatty and it attracts the wrong sort of tourists, with no money. I call them the ‘rucksack and plimsoll’ brigade.
“The old shops that I knew have just gone. The gallery’s gone and the two bookshops have gone. And the market has had the soul ripped out of it – all you can buy there now is Chinese imports. There’s not a crafts person left in there”.
Ms Gee added that the general shabbiness of the road was keeping out big High Street names that could regenerate the area for other retailers.
She said: “I drove through it recently and it is just dirty, tatty and uncared for. There isn’t a proper trader down there anymore. There is no multiple [High Street chain] because they don’t want to be in Chalk Farm. If there had been a Jigsaw or a Whistle, I would have survived. People would have looked after their shops better.”
The woman who first entered the rag trade aged 19 says she now has no plans to continue trading elsewhere, despite being inundated with letters and gifts from distraught customers.
She said: “I am at the end of my career now. If I was 10 years younger I would have relocated but at nearly 60 I don’t need the hassle anymore. When the rents go up, the rates go up as well so it is a double whammy.
“I think I was the oldest trader down there. There nothing left that’s been there for 20 years now. I have no doubt that several more traders will be leaving soon because of what’s happening.
“It’s sad. It used to be lovely.”

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