Where to buy great t-shirts in London

When I was down in London recently I was doing some shopping and naturally I wanted to see what the capital had to offer in terms of t-shirts. I’d done a little research before my trip, and found a few cool places, but I couldn’t find exactly what I was after. I figured that if I’m searching for that kind of info on the internet, then other people probably are too, so I thought it might be a good idea to make a list of clothing stores in London.

Upper Playground

Address: 31 Kingly Street, London, W1 (Google Maps Link)
Upper Playground have six retail stores, five of them are on the West Coast of the U.S., and luckily for us, one of them is in London.

Demo

Address: 19 Fouberts Place, W1F 7PZ (Google Maps Link)
If you’re going to Upper Playground, you may as well pop around the corner and head down Fouberts Place, where you’ll find Demo. It’s a fairly small shop, but it’s a veritable aladdin’s cave of top notch streetwear. Demo also happens to be the only place in the UK where I’ve seen Imaginary Foundation on sale, so its well worth a vist. Oh, and they have XLarge too.

Super Superficial

Address: 17 Fouberts Place, W1F 7QD and Kingly Court
I don’t know why Super Superficial’s only retail shops are within a couple of minutes walk of each other, but as long as they keep producing such great designs and offering Graniph-style discounts for buying more than one tee then I’ll be paying them a visit. If you want to pick between the two, I’d pick the Kingly Court shop, it feels a little larger, and I like the way they’ve fitted it out, but I assume they both offer the same range of designs.

howies

Address: 42 Carnaby Street, W1F 7DY (Google Maps Link)
Howies are a Welsh brand (who are astoundingly frank and open in their ‘about us‘ section) that produce really cool, simple tee designs. They started out life as a skate/bike brand, so you see a lot of those themes running through the shirts. Oh, and they’re eco-friendly too!

Chateau Roux

[Picture credit: Super Indellible]
Address: 17 Newburgh Street, W1F 7RZ (Google Maps Link)
Chateau Roux are a pretty young brand (launched May 2006), but they’ve managed to get pretty big, pretty fast, and opening their first store earlier this year is strong testament to that. I wonder what kind of packaging they use when you buy a tee there, because when you get one in the post its a pretty special occasion.

Lazy Oaf

Address: Kingly Court (Google Maps Link)
Lazy Oaf had a face-lift recently, and boy does it look cool. The LO shop sells all kinds of things, clothing, jewelry, and stationary to name a few, all of which have sprung from the creative mind of Gemma Shiel.

Terratag

Address: 188 Brick Lane, E1 6SA (Google Maps Link)
We’re moving away from the Carnaby area now, and heading to the land of Terratag, the guys who are all about Gundam, Graff, and Girls. They have a flagship store on Brick Lane (though they are stocked in a number of other locations across London and the rest of the UK) that shows off both their clothing lines and printed art.

Your Eyes Lie

[Can't find a picture of the store, sorry guys]
Address: Unit 6b, Camden Lock, NW1 8AL (Google Maps Link)
Your Eyes Lie is a brand run by a British and Thai designer that make some pretty darned awesome black and white tees, though they have started branching into the world of colours.

Concrete Hermit

[more pictures here]
Address: 5a Club Row, London, E1 6JX (Google Maps Link)
Just a stone’s throw from Brick Lane, Concrete Hermit have a brilliant gallery/store that is well worth a visit. I’ve done a full review of the store that can be found here, but the short version is that they sell art and tees done by the artists that they feature in the gallery.

Magma

[Picture credit: northerncontinent]
Address: 8 Earlham Street, WC2H 9RY (Google Maps Link) & 117 Clerkenwell Road, EC1R 5BY (Google Maps Link)
Technically, Magma is actually a design bookstore, but considering they sell some 2k by Gingham tees I think I can shoehorn one of my favourite London stores into this list. I can almost guarantee that if I ever enter this store I’ll be walking out with a red plastic bag that has T magazine (or something else achingly cool) in it.

Hideout

Address: 7 Upper James Street, W1F 9DF (Google Maps Link)
Hideout deals with higher-end streetwear labels such as Supreme, Billionaire Boys Club, and Neighborhood, so expect to leave this store with a far lighter wallet than you went in with.

Slam City Skates

Address: 16 Neal’s Yard, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9DP (Google Maps Link)
As you’d imagine from the name, Slam City Skates is heaven for skaters, but a lot of their clothing is friendly to those of us that have the balance of a top-heavy pin stood on a piece of rope between the Grand Canyon in a high-wind (… I can’t skate).

I’m sure that I’m missing loads of great stores off, but since I don’t go to London all that much I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to go exploring, so if you know of a shop that should be on this list when I’m next down in the big smoke then leave a comment and I’ll add it to the list (after a thorough vetting process of me deciding whether its cool or not).

Tagged as: Bricks & Mortar, bricks and mortar, cool, guide, list, Lists, london, retail, shopping, shops, stores, T-shirts