Mayfair's name comes from a chaotic 17th-century street fair, but its character was set when the aristocracy shut that fair down. The contradiction is the whole story. For 300 years Mayfair has been the most consistently wealthy postcode in London - the address aristocrats and bankers and oligarchs have picked when they could pick anywhere - because the original 18th-century planners built it to exclude everyone else. The grid was tight, the squares were locked behind keys held only by residents, the buildings were uniform brick fronts that prevented the kind of haphazard growth that built the rest of London. Today the keys are gone (the squares opened to the public in the 1940s) but the grid is intact, the squares are still squares, and Mayfair is still the address.
From open fair to closed estate
The May Fair - a chaotic annual two-week street fair held in what is now Shepherd Market and the surrounding fields - ran from about 1686 to 1764. It was famous for drunken brawls, stalls selling everything from oysters to performing bears, prostitution and gambling. The local aristocracy hated it. The Grosvenor family - who owned the freehold of most of the surrounding land - lobbied successfully to have the fair banned in 1764, and immediately began developing the land as a planned aristocratic suburb.
The Grosvenor Estate (still owned today by the Duke of Westminster, whose family wealth is largely Mayfair freeholds) developed the area through the 1720s-1770s. Grosvenor Square - the second-largest of London's planned squares, after Lincoln's Inn Fields - was laid out in 1725. Berkeley Square followed in 1747. Hanover Square (technically just east, now considered Mayfair's eastern edge) was laid out in 1717-1719. The grid of streets connecting them - Mount Street, Brook Street, North Audley, South Audley, Park Lane - was built up with brick terraces designed to a uniform 99-year leasehold standard that gave the Grosvenor Estate control over every aesthetic detail.
The result, by 1800, was the densest concentration of aristocratic London: dukes, earls, foreign ambassadors, leading politicians, the wealthiest commoners. The 99-year lease structure meant the Grosvenor Estate retained the freehold and effectively the right to refuse occupation; the social filter was tight. Even today, the Grosvenor Estate still owns most of the freehold and still operates a discreet acceptance process for new commercial tenants. Mayfair is the only London neighbourhood where what kind of business goes into a building is, in practice, the freeholder's decision.
Bond Street and the rise of the brands
Bond Street was originally a residential street; the commercial transformation began in the 1750s when a few high-end shops opened catering to the new aristocratic neighbourhood. Sotheby's opened on Bond Street in 1744 (the auction house moved to its current location at 34-35 New Bond Street in 1917). Asprey opened in 1781. Cartier moved to Bond Street in 1909. Tiffany followed in 1986. By the 1980s Bond Street was the world's most prestigious shopping street; by the 2010s it had the highest retail rents in Europe (about £2,000 per square foot per year in 2024, higher than Fifth Avenue).
The split between Old Bond Street (south, the older half, the higher-end brands) and New Bond Street (north, the longer half, the fashion houses) dates from when Bond Street was extended north from Burlington Gardens in 1721. The "Allies" sculpture - Lawrence Holofcener's 1995 bronze of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill chatting on a bench, placed at the south corner of the Burlington Gardens junction - marks the boundary and is one of central London's most-photographed sculptures.
Savile Row and bespoke
Savile Row - the parallel street to Bond Street, two blocks east - became the bespoke-tailoring centre of the world from the late 18th century. Henry Poole opened in 1806 at 32 Savile Row (still there, still operating, still bespoke). Norton & Sons opened in 1821. Henry Huntsman in 1849. Anderson & Sheppard in 1906 (moved off Savile Row to Old Burlington Street in 2005 but still considered part of the Row tradition). Gieves & Hawkes - the merger of two earlier houses dating from 1771 and 1785 - moved to 1 Savile Row in 1912.
The bespoke tradition involves making every measurement specifically for a customer, cutting the cloth specifically for them, sewing the suit by hand (about 60-80 hours of work per suit), and three fittings over 8-12 weeks. A full bespoke suit from one of the older houses starts at £4,500-£6,000 in 2026; the most prestigious houses charge £8,000+. Most Savile Row houses now also offer "made-to-measure" (less hand-stitching, fewer fittings, faster turnaround) starting at £1,500-£3,000, and ready-to-wear from £600. The houses welcome visitors - you can walk into Henry Poole and look at the cutting room without buying anything.
The American Embassy and Grosvenor Square
Grosvenor Square was the address of the US Embassy from 1938 to 2017. John Adams - second US president - lived at 9 Grosvenor Square in the 1780s. Dwight Eisenhower's WWII supreme command was at 20 Grosvenor Square. JFK was here as US ambassador (his father, Joseph Kennedy, was ambassador 1938-40). The 1960 Eero Saarinen embassy building - the modernist concrete-and-glass slab on the west side of the square - opened in 1960; the giant gold-painted aluminium eagle on its roof faced east. The embassy moved to Nine Elms (south of the Thames) in 2017; the Saarinen building is being converted into the Rosewood London hotel (opening 2025-2026).
The square retains its American history: bronze statues of Eisenhower (1989), Ronald Reagan (2011), and Franklin D. Roosevelt (1948) all stand here, plus the 9/11 memorial (a small bronze plaque listing the 67 British nationals killed in the 2001 attacks). The square gardens are public and free to enter, opened in 1939 after a century as a private residents-only enclosure.
The hotels and the modern Mayfair
The Mayfair hotels are the city's most concentrated luxury cluster. Claridge's at 49 Brook Street (originally 1812 as a small townhouse hotel, expanded into an Art Deco icon in 1898 and 1930) is the most famous - the New York Times once described it as "the hotel where world leaders go to relax". The Connaught at Carlos Place (1897, Edwardian dignified) is the more discreet rival. Browns at Albemarle Street (1837) is the oldest hotel in London. The Ritz at Piccadilly (1906) is the most famous internationally. The Dorchester at Park Lane (1931, the first concrete-frame luxury hotel in London) is the most Hollywood-adjacent.
Modern Mayfair is dominated by the financial services industry - the hedge funds, private equity firms and family offices that took over the upper floors of the Mayfair townhouses from the 1990s onwards. The annual office rental rates here are among the highest in the world. The hedge-fund community has reshaped the neighbourhood's pubs (the Punchbowl, the Audley) and restaurants (Scott's, Cipriani, Sexy Fish). The 2010s saw an enormous expansion of high-end Chinese, Russian and Middle Eastern investment in Mayfair freeholds; many of the grand townhouses are now ultra-high-net-worth private residences again - in some cases empty for most of the year. The Grosvenor Estate still owns the freehold underneath. The neighbourhood is still the address.
