The late Cindy Mainwaring Mack.
In the 1990s, she also ran the high-end Mainwaring’s Antiques Fair which ran on Sundays alongside the Saturday ‘Cindy’s Fair’.
She later met a young Matthew Adams (Adams Antiques Fairs and Frock Me!), whom she guided and eased into the business, collaborating with him to run a smart weekly car boot fair in Sydney Street, Chelsea.
In her late sixties Cindy moved to Whitstable, Kent, launching her Seaside Brocante which ran for 10 years.
She was a pioneer and well ahead of her time, running buying trips to Paris for dealers to visit the Clignancourt fleamarket and Monet’s garden at Giverny in Normandy.
Cindy was the first of a well-known trio of women to run fairs (the others being Caroline Penman and Caroline Stoddart Scott) and who were later followed by many more.
Many famous regulars came to her fairs over the years including Michael Hutchence, Joan Collins, John Malkovich, Meg Ryan, Kylie Minogue, Bernie Ecclestone and members of the Swedish royalty.
Cindy retired in 2019. Her business ran for exactly 40 years from 1979 to 2019. She was an accidental businesswoman, surviving a few bumps in the road and recessions along the way.
Colonial childhood
Cindy had a colonial childhood growing up in Rhodesia and Cape Town and was later head girl of The Warren, a boarding school in East Sussex.
She was the original ’60s ‘It girl’. She worked for David Marshall of estate agents Marsh & Parsons on Kensington Church Street, next to the original Biba shop. She later ran the lettings department of Hamptons in Knightsbridge before marrying Anthony Mack at Farm Street Church in Mayfair and then having her family.
Cindy was the daughter of Leonie and Harold Shurlock OBE, a barrister in the RAF who attended the post-war Nuremberg trials. She is survived by her two daughters Deborah and Pippa Mack.
From family
