Fashion Street
As in the centres of London, Paris, Milan, and Vienna, internationally-famous fashion retailers have found their place in the early-twentieth-century ambiance of Budapest’s UNESCO-protected Old Town. Fashion Street combines the old and the new, and offers visitors an uniquely elegant environment.
A concept long in gestation has become manifested in Deák Ferenc Street as the city’s centre of fashion is brought to life along the lines of London’s Regent’s Street or Milan’s Via Montenapoleone: the Fashion Street, with which Budapest reasserts itself as the capital city of Central Europe’s fashion culture. International fashion firms which up until now considered Prague the Eastern-most outpost of their trade could finally find the optimum environment in Hungary, accessible to discriminating Hungarians as well as the city’s many visitors. The old city centre can finally reclaim the last missing piece of its former glory, and we can rest assured that Budapest will once again be mentioned in the same breath as Paris and London as a centre of fashion commerce.
Deák Ferenc Street and its environs provide a superb setting for the city’s fashion quarter. It enjoys a particularly central location in close proximity to the Kempinski and Le Meridien luxury hotels, and its unique historical and cultural atmosphere, in combination with the major tourist sights, banks, national institutes, and local and regional headquarters of countless international firms combine to create an exciting commercial and cultural zone.
The professional world saw the mock-up of the Fashion Street Vision at the Real Estate Development Exhibition in Cannes in 2005, shortly after which the Italian press issued approving statements on behalf of the plan. Construction on the elegant commercial spaces of Deák Ferenc Street has been finished by autumn, 2008. With this, Immobilia Development restored the unique architectural elements of the street to its previous grandeur at the beginning of the 20th century, manifested and recreated in the form of Fashion Street.
One part of the project was the complete repair and restoration of the building’s facade and entrance arches, and the redesign of the street level to accommodate commercial activity. The renovation vastly improved the atmosphere of the immediate environment and increased the value of real estate in the immediate vicinity. 100-year-old arched arcades were rebuilt and refurbished to provide business spaces in keeping with the demands of today’s commercial life. The creation of 10,000 square meters of retail space cost the firm approximately 30 million Euro, an indicator of the magnitude of the project.
It was the firm’s intent to restore the buildings as faithfully as possible based on original plans and photographs from the period. The art historians and restoration specialists of the Hild-Ybl Foundation participated in the work, which was executed under the guidance of the Department of National Monument Protection.