The retail news out of Covent Garden this month is a lease, not a closure. Shaftesbury Capital has signed K-Way, the premium French outerwear brand, for a store at 19 Earlham Street in Seven Dials, opening in October. It runs to about 1,200 sq ft and will be the brand's third standalone store in the UK, after King's Road in 2025 and Carnaby Street in 2026.
Earlham Street is one of the short streets running off the Seven Dials junction in London WC2, a few steps from an ice cream counter and a pop-up space, and a couple of minutes from the pedestrian courtyard of Neal's Yard. It is the part of the district people mean when they talk about the Seven Dials independent shops, which makes an international outerwear brand taking a unit here worth looking at properly rather than filing under normal churn.
What K-Way is opening at 19 Earlham Street
K-Way will open at 19 Earlham Street in October 2026, its third standalone store in the UK. The c.1,200 sq ft shop stocks jackets, fleeces and apparel for men, women and children, according to Shaftesbury Capital, the West End landlord that announced the signing. The brand already trades on Carnaby Street in Soho.
The house product is the packable waterproof windbreaker the brand has sold since it was founded in 1965. TheIndustry.fashion reports that K-Way was founded in Paris that year and has since extended into knitwear, T-shirts, fleeces and accessories, with its colourful rainwear still at the centre of the offer. Owner BasicNet acquired the brand in 2004.
Lorenzo Boglione, CEO of the BasicNet Group, said in the leasing announcement that the third UK monobrand store "marks another important milestone in our strategy to strengthen the brand's presence in one of Europe's most dynamic retail markets", and that "following the successful openings on King's Road in 2025 and Carnaby Street in 2026, Covent Garden was a natural next step".
Fun fact: BasicNet's stable also includes Kappa, Superga and Sebago, and in 2025 it bought the US outerwear brand Woolrich for 90m euros, reported as £97.5m by TheIndustry.fashion.
The return that the area's own history explains
The reputation of Seven Dials is of a quarter that international brands circle and independents hold. The record is less tidy than that. K-Way previously operated a store on Henrietta Street in Covent Garden, which closed following the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit, according to TheIndustry.fashion. The October opening is a return to the district rather than a first arrival.
That return was signposted. Interviewed by TheIndustry.fashion last year, co-CEO Alessandro Boglione said after the King's Road opening: "We are already looking for another London location, so the King's Road is the first one, but not the last one." He added that the priority was finding the right store, and that the company wanted to build brand awareness in London before expanding further across the UK. Two London stores later, that sequence has held.
It is also worth setting against the wider year. The National reported in September 2026 that LK Bennett, Claire's and Quiz have all closed their remaining stores after falling into administration, while Joules, rescued by Next in 2022, is opening four new UK shops between October 2026 and spring 2027. Signing a 1,200 sq ft fashion unit in the West End in that market is a statement about the pitch, not just the brand.
Where the K-Way Seven Dials store sits against the rest of the mix
Set the incoming shop against its neighbours and the tiering is clear. Shaftesbury Capital describes the Covent Garden mix as premium international names alongside independent concepts, and the two ends of that are within sight of each other here. At 19 Shelton Street, a minute from the junction, Grosvenor Prints has traded since 1979 and holds what it describes as London's largest stock of antique prints. On Monmouth Street, Murdock London runs a barbershop on one of the spokes radiating from the Dials.
A K-Way windbreaker is a different proposition again. The brand frequently partners with high-end fashion and streetwear labels including Fendi, Saint Laurent, Ami Paris, Kappa and Universal Works, according to the Shaftesbury Capital announcement, which places it in the premium-accessible band rather than the luxury band. That is the gap in local Covent Garden shopping: technical clothing you might actually wear in October rain, sold by a brand with a collaboration history that gives it fashion credibility.
William Oliver, Director of Retail and Restaurant Leasing at Shaftesbury Capital, said the brand's decision to take a second unit within the landlord's portfolio reflected "both the appeal of the neighbourhood and the confidence brands have in our stewardship of London's West End".
What else is on around Earlham Street this month
Short-run beauty activations are doing the rest of the work on the street in September 2026. Armani Beauty holds a one-day Dolci Club pop-up at The Stables, 40 Earlham Street, on Saturday 19 September, with the five shades of its Dolci Makeup Blush, make-up artists on hand for shade matching, pink-themed Armani coffee and a collectibles counter, according to TheIndustry.beauty.
Laura Geller Beauty is running its first solo UK retail event over the same weekend. Cosmetics Business reports a three-day Beauty of Baked pop-up in Covent Garden from 18 to 20 September 2026, staged as an Italian bakery-inspired space to mark the Italian manufacturing behind the brand's Baked make-up collection.
Two pop-ups and one 1,200 sq ft lease is a fair snapshot of how this end of the district works. Brands test the footfall for a weekend, and the ones that like what they see come back for a shopfront.
Planning the walk before the shutters open
Earlham Street sits inside the Seven Dials block of Covent Garden, with Endell Street close to Covent Garden Underground station on the eastern side. Until 19 Earlham Street opens, the street is worth a detour anyway. Udderlicious makes its ice cream and vegan sorbets on site at number 24, a few steps from the junction.
For a fixed point in the day, Ole & Steen at 39 Neal Street is the largest of the Danish bakery's London branches and trades as an all-day bakery from 7.30 in the morning until 9 at night, seven days a week. In Neal's Yard itself, 26 Grains runs as a 24-seat daytime restaurant at number 1, and the salon Hair by Fairy occupies 8 to 10 in the same painted courtyard.
A sensible shape for a Seven Dials morning is coffee on Neal Street, the prints on Shelton Street, then the loop through the Dials to Earlham Street. Come October, the windbreakers are the reason to make that loop in the rain rather than avoid it.