Hidden in the winding lanes of Covent Garden, To Jump Like Alice was more than a fashion boutique—it was a portal. Opened in the late 1960s by Sarah Buadpiece and Debbie Torrens, the shop took its curious name from a 1950 poem by Philip Larkin: "to jump, like Alice, with floating skirt into my head." And that’s exactly what it offered—a place where fashion, fantasy, and altered states of consciousness merged in true Wonderland style.
While boutiques like Granny Takes a Trip and Biba drew the limelight, To Jump Like Alice catered to the more enigmatic edge of the psychedelic scene. It was part of the vibrant "scenius" that Nick Coates describes in his Alice & the Eggman Series—where Lewis Carroll’s Alice became a muse for London’s countercultural revolution. The boutique reflected that shift: Alice not as a child's dream, but as a heroine of mind-expansion, rebellion, and reinvention.
The shop’s visual identity was steeped in Carrollian symbolism. A rare advert from the International Times (1968) features the Mad Hatter—a wink, perhaps, to the tailoring trade, but also an invitation to step into altered realities "made cloth." A business card held in the V&A archives preserves this psychedelic Wonderland in miniature: part fashion, part myth, part riddle. Though little else survives in print, To Jump Like Alice remains one of those glittering fragments of the late ‘60s—one that, like the White Rabbit himself, invites us to follow a trail through mirrors, memories, and London fog.
Source: Nick Coates, Alice & the Eggman Series
