Outside Virginia Bates’s vintage couture shop in Holland Park, the great, the good and the fashionable have gathered for afternoon tea. While the designers Erdem Moralioglu and Roksanda Ilincic mingle with Bates’s actress daughter, Daisy, the pop artist Peter Blake sips champagne next to the restaurateur Jeremy King.

Spread out on a white-clothed table in front of them is a tea that would make Mr Kipling shrivel with shame. There’s an orange-blossom honey cake, shaped like a kugelhopf, a plate of sticky toffee cakes, baked to look like roses, and tiny cupcakes with a violet swirl of blueberry icing. It all looks fabulous — and to judge from the expression on people’s faces, it tastes fabulous as well.

This teatime cornucopia is the work of Cocomaya, one of London’s most bijou chocolate shops, which later this month is opening a boutique bakery, with the glamorous former Agent Provocateur Serena Rees at the helm. As well as selling cakes and bread, the plan is to provide a kind of afternoon traiteur service for the capital’s discerning tea-takers, and the bash at Virginia’s is the first such event.

Rees built a business from knowing what makes women feel good, so it makes sense that cakes and chocolate have filled the gap left by undies. “It’s all the things I’m passionate about,” she says. “I love my work in fashion, I love chocolate and I have a lifetime tea-and-cake obsession. I always love that thing in France where you get your cake and it’s wrapped with a ribbon. I suppose it’s something to do with the unwrapping, the idea that it’s a treat.”

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Rees is in good company. Cocomaya’s co-founders, Joel Bernstein (an old friend of Bates) and Walid Al Damirji, also have a background in fashion — Bernstein as the former head of concept at Liberty, Al Damirji as a designer and consultant for the likes of Roland Mouret and Harvey Nichols. “Of course, we want to be fashionable,” Rees says, “but it’s not just about making things look beautiful. It’s about things tasting amazing, too.”

Cocomaya’s master baker will focus on earthy decadence — what Bernstein calls “proper artisan baking” — while the existing chocolate shop is moving to be next door to the bakery. There’s also going to be a chocolate tearoom, serving champagne, chocolate scones, even chocolate jam. “It’s a chocolate lounge, if you like,” Rees says. “The sort of place you want to sit with a friend or a lover. The good thing about chocolate — or tea and cake — is that it’s a luxurious treat, but the sort of treat you can have every day.”

Back at Virginia’s, teatime is nearly over. How does Virginia think it went? “Oh, very well,” she says. “A good tea was had by all.”

Cocomaya bakery, 12 Connaught Street, W2; 020 7706 2770, cocomaya.co.uk

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