Fashion designers given residency at Hackney Shop pop-up
Leutton Postles take over the Hackney Shop. Photograph: Leutton Postles
It’s a gloriously sunny autumn Sunday and the usually traffic heavy Hackney thoroughfare of Morning Lane is decidedly chirpy. Not least due to one particular shop front, glowing from door to window with an abundance of colour and metallic shine.
This is the Hackney Shop – a pop-up space for local designers and labels – and on my visit, the textile-heavy, brilliantly-bright fashion design duo Leutton Postle had taken over, bringing their ‘more is more’ aesthetic to the space.
And why not – this kind of DIY takeover is exactly what the Hackney Shop was created for. The corner building sits directly opposite Pringle and Aquascutum, in a strip of Morning Lane now referred to as the Hackney Fashion Hub.
A joint initiative of the council and the fashion hub, the Hackney Shop functions as a free temporary pop-up space for local talent to showcase their collections and an outlet for selling end-of-line stock.
It provides an antidote to the glossy labels sitting alongside it, as well as to the Primark just down the street and Westfield a stone’s throw away. It offers consumers bespoke, innovative products, and is a commercial outlet for local designers that will not compromise their creativity.
A designer or brand simply applies for the use of the space, which incidentally comes as a white box – a blank canvas. If accepted, they receive the keys on Monday evening and have the space until the Sunday, to do with as they please.
If Leutton Postle are anything to go by, the possibilities are endless: floor to ceiling silver foil and spray-painted graffiti in signature electric blues and orange making for an eye watering backdrop to the clothes – treasures from past collections, all neon crochet, tassels and abstract, painterly pattern. Sam Leutton and Jenny Postle are big advocates of the space.”
We get to speak to our customers face-to-face in an environment created by us. We also met a lot of people who, beforehand, were not aware of us as a label, so we are raising our profile within London too.” says Leutton Postle.
The space will continue to benefit from the area’s regeneration as a fashion destination, but will also never have to compete with the big dogs, due to its temporal, one-of-a-kind nature. Since opening, designers including Atalanta Weller, Holly Fulton, James Long, Noel Stewart, Todd Lynn, Coops London, Roksanda Illincic and Agi and Sam have all sold through the store, either by collaborating on pop-up boutiques with fellow designers or through organising their own one-off sample sales.
If only walls could speak – for in its first few seasons alone the Hackney Shop has temporarily housed creations by some of East London’s most interesting designers and makers.