Fashion: Off the shelf .BL.- SOPHIA CHAUCHARD-STUART and BELINDA MORRIS

LIBRARY is a menswear shop with a bookish edge that opens later this month at stylish Brompton Cross in central London.

Owned by ex-Joseph designer and buyer Peter Siddell, in partnership with a colleague from his earlier days at Jones, Aaron Firth, Library will sell labels including Dirk Bikkembergs, Paul Smith, Antonio Miro, and an own-label line of Library knitwear.

But Library will also carry a wide selection of reference books on art, architecture, travel, textiles and fashion - indeed, anything that might provide information for fashion folk.

Regular exhibitions of old clothing are also promised. 'Like a real library, we want to mix the old and the modern,' says Siddell.