Something New in the Hood

London.  Back to wet leaves mingling with the smell of bacon sardines, market stall holders shouting “Everything must go for a paaaaaaand!” and shrill announcements from TFL.  If that sounds vaguely like amateur poetry, that’s when you know I’m glad to be back.

For one thing, I can properly “hang out” in my own city.  And hang out is what I intend to do this weekend with a multitude of flat whites, a chow down at the latest Korean/Vietnamese/Texan fusion hole and a visit to stores like Goodhood, which opened up a new two floor MEGA-store on the beginning of Curtain Road.  Founders Kyle Stewart and Jo Sindle had outgrown their Coronet Street location which is still their office, and luckily found a site a stone throw’s away for their ever expanding buy of menswear, womenswear, homewards as well as kidswear and beauty to flourish.  How odd to walk into Goodhood now and for there to be a Floor Guide as if it’s a mini department store of the East.  It even has a cafe now, run in collaboration with Brett Redman from the delish Pavilion Cafe in Victoria Park.

The expansion of Goodhood from cult boutique to bona fide lifestyle was inevitable in some ways.  Especially when it started going deep into homewards and adding their “Lifestore” to their old Coronet Street location.  Now they have 3,000 sq feet to play with and the result is a proper lifestyle store, something that I find sometimes lacking in London where clothes, books, food and home merge with one another on a cohesive taste level.  The truth is there are few stores that can afford the square footage to carry through such a concept.  When I was in L.A. I loved how there were so many stores such as Piece Collective and General Store, which had these incredible spaces to allow pottery to mingle with homespun scarves dotted amongst books.  Goodhood, with the added bonus of having figured out a fashion buy that works for their customer, can now fully explore their other departments too with this mega space.  I love all their selection of Scandi interior stalwarts like Hay, Studio Arhoj and Ferm Living.

As for the clothes, their selection has always been to serve someone that isn’t “fashion-fashion” – labels that have appeal to a wider cross section of people that aren’t slaves to keeping up with the catwalks.  That doesn’t mean the clothes are basic but that you don’t need to be rabidly into fashion to “get” them.  Wood Wood, Perks and Mini and Surface to Air have long been Goodhood staples for both guys and girls.  Likewise you can always rely on Goodhood for Junya Watanabe mens and Norse Projects.  Goodhood remains one of the few (if not only?) places to find pretty pretty lingerie by Lonely (their Sabel cut out bra – the only bra I can tolerate…).  Newer label additions though expand Goodhood’s remit and taps into their own tagline which is that the store is for “Weirdos, Stylers, Punks and Outsiders.”  For instance, Sofia Prantera and Fergus Purcell’s co-designed skate-influenced Aries label and Gosha Rubchinsky menswear represent Goodhood widening their design eye.  There’s TBA footwear for chunky heeled-fetishists like myself.  And Building Block – the LA based accessories label that does utilitarian bags in line with an anti-IT bag wave.  It’s also good to see they’ve picked up LF Markey, who has now condensed her label into well made wardrobe staples.  

In a city where you can easily reel of independent fashion stores off your ten fingers, as places come and go, it’s good to know that people like Goodhood are expanding and building a mini empire on their own.