★ PAD London

01Why it matters

PAD is where the London interiors trade and the international design market meet the art-collecting audience, and its position in the week gives it disproportionate reach for a fair of sixty-odd stands. For dealers in twentieth-century furniture it is one of three or four selling weeks that matter in a year. For visitors, it is the most efficient way to understand what collectible design costs and what it looks like in quantity, because the whole fair can be walked in an hour and a half. In our reading, PAD's real function in Frieze week is as a corrective: after two enormous fairs in Regent's Park, a small pavilion full of chairs and lamps that people actually use is a relief, and the trade treats it that way.

02The week around it

PAD sits at the center of the busiest week in London's cultural year. Frieze London and Frieze Masters open in Regent's Park on the Wednesday; Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips hold their October evening sales across the same three days; and the Mayfair and St James's galleries put up their strongest shows and stay open late. Berkeley Square itself is closed to traffic on the pavilion's side. Everything of consequence that week is within a twenty-five-minute walk, which is the single most useful fact about London's October and the reason people who follow the design market come for it.

03When to arrive

Come in on the Monday or Tuesday. The Collectors Preview on the Tuesday and the VIP Opening on the Wednesday are the days the trade does its business; the public days from Thursday are quieter to look at and easier to talk on. If PAD is the reason for the trip rather than Frieze, three nights from Tuesday covers the fair, the Mayfair galleries and the saleroom exhibitions comfortably.

04Where to stay

Mayfair, obviously — Berkeley Square is the fair's front door and Claridge's, the Connaught and the Beaumont are all within a few hundred yards. Marylebone is the better-value alternative and is closer to Regent's Park for the Frieze days. St James's is quiet and convenient for the salerooms. Anything further out means the Underground during the busiest week of London's autumn, which is manageable but takes the pleasure out of a week whose whole point is that it can be walked.

05Access and hospitality

PAD sells public tickets online through its own registration system for the Thursday to Sunday. The Collectors Preview on the Tuesday and the VIP Opening on the Wednesday operate on the fair's invitation list, administered through the exhibiting galleries and the fair's own collector relations, and are not sold. The organizer publishes practical detail down to the coat-check charges of £2 for a jacket or small bag and £5 for a suitcase; ticket prices were not stated on the page we read. No hospitality packages are offered.

06Where the social activity happens

Berkeley Square and the streets immediately off it — Bruton Street, Bruton Place, Mount Street and Davies Street — carry the fair's daytime and early evening traffic, and the hotel bars on Brook Street and Mount Street fill from six. Cork Street, Dover Street and Albemarle Street hold the gallery openings. The salerooms at Berkeley Square, New Bond Street and King Street are all within ten minutes' walk. Regent's Park absorbs the fair crowd during the day. All of it is public; the dinners are not.

07Getting there

08Practicalities

09History

Perrin's Paris fair began in 1998 in the Jardin des Tuileries, at a moment when twentieth-century design was moving out of the antiques trade and into a collectors' market of its own. The London edition followed in 2007, arriving in Berkeley Square just as Frieze had established October as London's art month and just before the financial crisis reshaped the market it served. It survived that and grew steadily; The Art Newspaper marked its fifteenth edition in 2023. PAD has since extended to Saint-Tropez in the summer, but London and Paris remain the two fairs that carry the name's weight.

10Who is there

Interior designers and decorators, who are the fair's core buyers; private collectors of twentieth-century and contemporary design; the Mayfair and Pimlico Road antiques and interiors trade; art collectors crossing over from the Frieze fairs and the salerooms; and jewelry buyers, for whom PAD has a distinct following. Smaller and more professional than the fairs in Regent's Park, and noticeably more European.