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

Earlier this week when I posted those queue pics of crazed JC fans and attached what I thought was the Summer releases…. I was wrong, the latest round of tees are now available though, I promise!Johnny Cupcakes

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Tags » boston • johnny cupcakes • New Designs • releases • retail • Summer • T-shirts

No cupcakes, what the hell were they thinking?!I think this is the first time that HYA has ever had someone actually do a bit of reporting that isn’t me. I found out that Huzzah Goods were going to be taking a peak at the line snaking out of 279 Newbury Street, asked if they could snap a few pictures, they said they could, and they did. My God I love the internet.

I’ve always thought that my coverage of Johnny Cupcakes was a bit excessive, I do mention them/him quite a lot, but apparently my interest in JC is nothing compared to the dedication of the people that actually camped outside of the store a couple of days before they were even released. Seriously, they spent two days on a pavement just to buy a t-shirt that was limited to 100 pieces.

Click on through for a load of pictures of the line, and an image that I roughly photoshopped of most of the summer range, which is available right now from JC.com, minus the in-store exclusives, obviously.

(more…)

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Tags » boston • Huzzah Goods • johnny cupcakes • New Designs • no cupcakes! • releases • retail • T-shirts • twitter

Lazy Oaf reopened their Kingly Court store a few days ago, as you can see it looks rather swish, a definite improvement on the store I visited during my Margin trip.

If you’re a Londoner, or just in the area (Kingly Court is located on/just off Carnaby Street), check them out, tell them Andy from HYA sent ya, they’ll have no idea who you’re talking about, but still, tell ‘em.

If you’re not in the area, check out this blog post and be sad that you didn’t have a chance to get in on the beardy festivities of the re-opening.

Lazy Oaf

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Tags » lazy oaf • london • opening • retail • shop

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