There are few stretches of London that sum up the city and its style so succinctly as Portobello Road in West London, which unfurls from Pembridge Road near the busy junction of Notting Hill Gate, stretching northwards, intersecting with bijou Westbourne Grove and fun Westbourne Park Road before slinking under the Westway, the elevated section of the A40 dual carriageway.

Antique shops line its sides at the ritzier southern end while, as you move north, you’ll come across newsagents, high-street shops and, of course, London being London, a Tesco Metro. All along the way, there are market stalls selling, depending on the day you visit, fruit and veg, antiques and vintage fashion.

"'It’s groovy. It’s always been groovy,' says the stylist Bay Garnett, a woman who grew up rifling through the second-hand clothes at Portobello Road Market."

The market is what makes Portobello Road so quintessentially ‘London’, the stalls are what set it apart from countless other pulchritudinous  thoroughfares in the city. The shouting and rummaging and bargains offset the grandeur of the nearby houses, allowing even those with just a few quid in their pockets to buy themselves something stylish, to pick up a unique bargain. It’s high-meets-low, that glorious juxtaposition on which London is built, a place where working-class communities (the area traditionally attracted the Irish and Caribbean diaspora) live and work and shop alongside the rich (nowadays many of the rich are American bankers), a place where you can buy a second-hand shawl from a stallholder for less than £10 before calling into the two-Michelin-starred Ledbury restaurant for your supper.

The market began in the 1860s – possibly as a result of Romany gypsies trading horses on the street, according to Portobello Voices by local historian Blanche Girouard – and was then, as now, considered to be a convivial meeting place as well as retail destination. 

‘It’s groovy. It’s always been groovy,’ says the stylist and photographer Bay Garnett, a woman who grew up rifling through the second-hand clothes at Portobello Road Market, on the subject of its eternal appeal.

‘There’s a spirit, an animation,’ she says. ‘You can pick up ideas but it’s not somewhere that you see trends, and that’s what I like about it. It feels fresh.’

Celia Birtwell is another fashion figure who has drawn inspiration from Portobello Road Market. ‘It was very instrumental in my career,’ the fashion and textile designer says. ‘Because I used to go there and find all sorts of things, particularly when I worked with Ossie [Clark]. I’d find wonderful old 1930s dresses, or interesting shapes; even if it was moth-eaten, [it didn’t matter] because the shapes were good. It was quite an inspiration for me.’

‘It’s always been my favourite area,’ she says. ‘I like the hotchpotch and the craziness of it. I still have a soft spot for it and my hope is that it remains similar for the next generation really.’

She recalls a Portobello Road before Richard Curtis’s sunny paean to the area, Notting Hill, was released, a time when the area could genuinely be described as ‘bohemian’ rather than the more loathsome ‘boho-chic’. 

‘Oh it was fun,’ she remembers. ‘So varied. There were places where people said, “Oh you mustn’t go down there, it’s dangerous.”  It’s become super-smart but in my heyday, it was full of interesting people and it was quite artistic and musical and I think it’s been a bit wiped out.’ She reminisces fondly about the type of pub – ‘Old Irish pubs that had jukeboxes and you wouldn’t really go into too easily. There was a kind of crowd that I wouldn’t be able to relate to’ – that were to be found on Westbourne Park Road, where she operated her business, pubs that have since been replaced by smarter destinations like the Tom Conran-owned Cow, a joint that serves ‘handmade tagliolini’ to its supermodel and celebrity patrons. 

Garnett, who recently sought to capture the spirit of the Portobello Road area in a photography project for Sony, concedes that gentrification has altered the character of the neighbourhood, but there is, she says, an abiding aura of real fun and joy to be found at the market. ‘It feels kind of the same as when I started going there in my teens. Yes, more gentrified, but the same sort of experience.  You can go there and spend the Friday rummaging and it’s such a genuinely lovely experience. It’s about eclecticism. And individuality. A little bit of anarchy. It’s about London.’ 

"The Portobello Road remains a massive inspiration for fashion designers, especially those who favour a sort of British boho glamour."

The Portobello Road remains a massive inspiration for fashion designers, especially those who favour a sort of British boho glamour, and Alice Temperley says that she continues to trawl the market for finds. Her spring/summer 2015 collection was inspired by a book of photography by Seydou Keïta she came across while hunting through the stalls. ‘My office is right by the market and it has always been one of my best sources of inspiration,’ she says. ‘The perfect time to go is 7am on a Saturday morning when the dealers are just setting up, you can find the most unique pieces at that time before anyone else snaps them up.’ 

It is sadly inevitable that an area that so embodies London would come face-to-face with gentrification and globalisation – we are after all a city of people who whoop when a Waitrose arrives in our neighbourhood – but Portobello Road is bravely holding out. Of course it's changing, bending to accommodate the desires of its rich inhabitants, but as long as the market is operating, you can be sure that its spirit – and its style – remains.

Bay Garnett captured Portobello Road Market on the Sony Alpha 7R camera.  

Follow me @lynnenright