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).

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Tags » Bricks & Mortar • bricks and mortar • cool • guide • list • Lists • london • retail • shopping • shops • stores • T-shirts

Another day, another back to school sale. This time its Johnny Cupcakes getting in on the action, so if you were one of the people refusing to buy a JC tee because they’re usually around $35 a pop, now you can complain that they’re around $25 a pop for a limited time.

Oh, and his LA store is open now, there’s tons of pictures on the site of the new store, for which there was a line of around 600 people for the opening (were they selling iPhones or something?).

Johnny Cupcakes

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Tags » bricks and mortar • johnny cupcakes • LA • Los Angeles • retail • sale • T-shirts

Wow, I’m really linking the posts well at the moment aren’t I? The last post mentioned tea, and this one is about a Finnish t-shirt boutique with a tea pun in its name, its almost as if I actually plan this stuff!

I know that most of you don’t live in Helsinki (Finland accounted for 0.5% of HYAs traffic last month), and I don’t think its an international tourist hot spot (I went once, it was lovely, I ate reindeer & went to the Olympic stadium), but I really like the look of this boutique in the Finnish capital, mostly because the list of brands they stock sounds a lot like the people I write about (Design By Humans, EIO Clothing, Chateau Roux, Threadless, plus many others). If I were to ever open up a t-shirt shop I think it would be almost exactly like My Cup Of T, so if you happen to be on Iso Roobertinkatu street pop in and check them out.

My Cup Of T

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Tags » bricks and mortar • chateau roux • design by humans • eio clothing • finland • helsinki • my cup of t • retail • Threadless • threaless

Shirtspotting headed down to Yackfou’s store on opening day to take advantage of that special 50% off one-day sale, and also to snap a few pictures. Google Translate hasn’t done a particularly good job in letting us non-German speakers understand what Markus is actually saying, but from what I can tell, he likes it.Click on through for more pictures.

Yackfou Shop Opening @ Shirtspotting (Google Tanslated) (Original German version)

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Tags » berlin • bricks and mortar • Germany • retail • Shirtspotting • yackfou

Do you remember Yackfou? They’re a bunch of Berliners who produce clothes that have a touch of awesome about them, and now you don’t just have to buy those clothes online, you can buy them in their shop (yes, a real shop, with windows and stuff).Well, not quite yet, the shop, located on the Boxhagener Platz, Friedrichshain, in the centre of Berlin, doesn’t actually open until July 5th, and when it does, Berliners, you’re gonna want to head down. On the opening day, everything in the shop is going to have 50% off, which certainly isn’t a price cut to be sniffed at (whatever that means). They’ll also be selling prototype and sample pieces in the shop, which is nice.

Yackfou

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Tags » berlin • bricks and mortar • Germany • News • retail • sales • yackfou

Yes Huzzah Goods, you are being quoted in the title.

Karmaloop aren’t just one of the world’s biggest streetwear websites, they also have a traditional bricks and mortar store on Newbury Street, Boston (the same street as Johnny Cupcakes store) which has just been redesigned and reopened. I don’t know what it looked like before, but I know it looks pretty freakin’ sweet now. They’ll be selling some of the products that are available online, as well as a few lines that are going to be exclusive to the store. You can also shop online in the store if they don’t stock something you want, and you’ll get free shipping on those online orders, which is quite a clever way of marrying the online and offline experience.

As you’d expect, they’ve also put together a video on KarmaloopTV where the Karmaloop CEO, Greg Selkoe gives you a guided tour of the new retail space. Also as you’d expect, I’ve embedded that video below.

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Tags » boston • bricks and mortar • Karmaloop • store • video

Johnny Cupcakes LA shoppe SNEAK PEEK 1 from Johnny Cupcakes on Vimeo.
I called it! I totally called it!

My last Johnny Cupcakes post was titled “Johnny Cupcakes is turning into Willie Wonka”, and take a guess what he said in the latest mailout?

I almost feel like the Willy Wonka of t-shirts. I enjoy making people feel like kids again.

Yep, I’m feeling pretty good right now, why? Because I totally called it! If you haven’t noticed, I’m a really bad winner (hell, you don’t want to see me lose), so when I get something right its usually best to just walk away for about five minutes until I’ve stopped gloating.

Anyway, JC has dropped a video (feed reader… readers may need to click through to watch the embedded vid) that explains all the goings on at the new store, it doesn’t give us much more information, but its good to have a video to help me visualise the shop. When this place opens if there aren’t any good pictures on Flickr or the JC site I might have to get my guy in LA to cover it.

Johnny Cupcakes

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Tags » bricks and mortar • johnny cupcakes • Los Angeles • video

I love how Johnny Cupcakes seems to have an attitude that magic can happen, and he makes it happen. Its an attitude that I like, and would like to emulate, but unfortunately I don’t own a successful t-shirt business, so my ideas remain stuck in my ideas book (I really do have one).The above picture is a good example of that. Johnny Cupcakes is opening a store on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles and he’s got the guys who make engineering projects for Disney to create some custom made contraptions that will help to make the shop extra special . That green thing that JC is stood next to is just a tiny corner of a massive 10 foot tall vintage oven that will be in the shop (more pics in the thumbs), presumably non-functioning. I can’t imagine how cool that the shop is going to look in mid-June when it opens, so I’ll be keeping an eye on JCs blog for more photos.

Just so that this post wasn’t a total tease, this weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) you can get free shipping at johnnycupcakes.com by using the coupon code UPS step four of the checkout process. Please note this only applies to US Ground shipping, sorry my international friends.

Johnny Cupcakes

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Tags » bricks and mortar • Coupon Codes • free • johnny cupcakes • Los Angeles • shipping

Anyone remember the lovely people that generously sponsored the Christmas giveaway which had more than $200 worth od prizes up for grabs? No prizes this time for remembering that it was Mauve. They’ve moved their retail store to a new location at 507 East Balboa, Newport Beach, so if you’re in the area (possibly on a fan tour recreating scenes from The O.C.) pop by and check it out. Tell them Andy from HYA sent you, you won’t get any discount, but it will make me feel important.

Mauve

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Tags » bricks and mortar • california • mauve • newport beach • retail

Lazy Oaf are opening a pop-up shop (which seem to be all the rage nowadays) on Ganton Street, London, whilst they give their regular shop at Kingly Court a makeover. I visited the Kingly Court shop during my recent trip to London, but didn’t have the balls to introduce myself since they probably wouldn’t have known who I was. Which would have been awkward.

Anyway, I was very impressed with the quality level when I went, and can now wholeheartedly recommend them based upon experience rather than my usual standard of ‘it looks cool so it probably is cool’. Here’s the deets about the temporary store:

This will be no normal shop though- Oh no! This is our super dooper bargainous sale extravaganza pop-up shop where you will most certainly be overcome by cheap thrills galore!

Most of the tees will be priced at £10 or …wait for it… 3 t-shirts for a teeny tiny amount of £20. Lovely.

Sweatshirts will be reduced down to £20 and polo-shirts, £15. Mmmm, nice.

So, everything MUST go, as we need to make room for lots more yummy stuff when the brand new, fresh and spangly shop re-opens. WE CANNOT WAIT!

The sale shop opens at Number 2, Ganton Street (see map) on Saturday 8th March at 12 noon for 7 days, 11am-7pm. See you there with your purse, ready for frenzied shopping!

This is an in-store sale only, because of a recent web sale they had, which I may or may not have remembered to post about.

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Tags » • bricks and mortar • lazy oaf • london • sale • shop