By 1970 the international image of British fashion was dominated by brands that produced vibrant, affordable, seasonally updated styles for the young consumer. Existing infrastructure (the diverse textile industry, garment manufacturing, marketing for export and design education) had helped to create and support the 1960s fashion revolution, which saw entrepreneurs such as John Stephen and Mary Quant become figureheads for ‘Swinging London’, displacing the traditional leaders of fashion, the elite couture houses of Paris. From 1955, with the boom in visual media, the early boutiques on Carnaby Street and the King’s Road demonstrated the demand for young British fashion and their owners built successful businesses, seeing the fashion retail opportunities offered by urban renewal in neglected areas of the city. They provided innovative models that many individuals and existing retailers and wholesale manufacturers sought to emulate and extend. Shops that opened in the 1960s and 70s such as Biba and Bus Stop offered creative and relatively accessible fashion to the post-war baby-boomer generation.

In 1969, just as Biba was moving from Kensington Church Street to the High Street around the corner, Lee Bender and her husband Cecil opened their first Bus Stop shop, a few doors away, at number 3. Lee Bender had trained at St Martins’ School of Art, and the couple created the label Lee Cecil in the mid-1960s. While Biba had reached a wide following outside London through their mail-order catalogues of 1968-9, Lee Bender opened a chain of twelve Bus Stop stores across the UK, which sold the distinctive Bus Stop look including pretty 1940s style dresses and tailoring, glam rock flares and platforms, until 1979 when the company was bought by Stephen Marks of French Connection. Like many other 1960s and 1970s brands, Bus Stop garments are highly collectable on the vintage market today.