THE Beatles found their Sgt. Pepper jackets there, and Kate Moss, Jean-Paul Gaultier and the occasional foreign general have all rummaged through the store’s cluttered collection.

For more than 50 years Laurence Corner dressed the worlds of fashion and film – not forgetting armies of students – in its trademark brand of military surplus chic.

When its founder ­Victor Jamilly passed away in 2007, the Euston shop was forced to close and Camden lost a sar­torial institution. But not, it turns out, for long.

The original Laurence Corner’s fighting spirit has returned to the borough, at a new shop in Camden Lock’s East Yard.

For more than 50 years the braided officers’ tunics and standard-issue combat trousers of Laurence Corner have been a big attraction for designers, pop stars and foreign armies.

But the world’s most famous army surplus store — the inspiration for Sgt Pepper, couturier to Michael Jackson and supplier of cheap military chic for generations of students — will close this weekend. Laurence Corner opened in 1947 when Victor Jamilly discovered that he could make a profit from the unused equipment being sold by the Army.

“He would go to army auctions and buy in bulk,” said Mr Jamilly’s daughter, Kim Einhorn. “He had an amazing eye for a bargain and would seem to find a buyer for everything.

From Sergeant Pepper jackets in the Sixties, to combat pants that have actually seen combat: Laurence Corner's army surplus has become a fashion institution. Sally Williams meets the woman in charge

WHO'D HAVE thought that selling cast-off combat trousers could be exciting? Let alone include journeys to Istanbul and Egypt searching out unusual fatigues, visits from Val Kilmer, Annie Lennox and Katharine Hamnett, invitations to fashion shows, chatting to stylists, fashion editors, television producers and seeing your old clothes turn up in the most glamorous of places. "Vogue, Loaded, Dazed & Confused, the Observer." Kim Jamilly, managing director of Laurence Corner, the army surplus shop in London's Hampstead Road, is rattling through her list. "All the uniforms on Spitting Image, the belts the sand men wore in Star Wars... just about everything from Indiana Jones to the whistle Dawn French will blow in the next Comic Strip production. About a third of our business is in magazines, film, videos and stage production, so this isn't straightforward retail at all.