Tucked away on a little side street in East London’s Hoxton locale is a compact two-floor boutique that has remained relevant and consistent in challenging times for physical store fronts, with winning curation, a very impressive brand roster (home to brands such as PAM, Junya Watanabe Man, Wood Wood and Pendleton) and keeping true to their ethos with admirable enthusiasm and success.
Designers, Jo Sindle and Kyle Stewart are the creative duo behind the Goodhood name (established 2007) and in my opinion, have made nothing but substantial moves to guarantee themselves a prolonged future as one of London’s finest.
We had the opportunity to sit with Kyle (our congratulations to you both, as Kyle’s partner, Jo is currently away on maternity leave) to discuss style, influences and the future of the ‘hood.
Who are ya + what do you do?
My name is Kyle Stewart. I’m co-owner of Goodhood store and I run this place.
Tell us a bit about the Goodhood store and brand.
The store was set up in 2007 by me and my partner Jo Sindle. It started out as a bit of an idealistic project to curate brands and products that we’d seen on our travels. It was important for us to try and get a range of goods that, at the time, shared our ideas of independence and what that stood for, along with quality and creativity. The store has been going for 4 years now and has got bigger, with an additional floor for men’s in the basement and a gallery just over the street.
Myself and my partner Jo, we come from a design background and so it was important for us to create an identity around what we were trying to do. I come from a graphics background and Jo comes from clothing design background, that’s why we’ve been able to do collaborations with the people at R.Newbold, ’cause it’s something we’ve been doing for years. The graphics thing is a thing we’ve that we’ve rolled with – there’s myself and other designers involved with in the business, so it’s easy to roll out an indentity and be quite strong on that side of things. Although we are a multi-brand store, people very much see the store as a brand in itself.
You recently released the latest collaboration effort between yourself and R. Newbold, which was consistently strong. How did that team up come about?
Basically, friends of friends worked at Paul Smith and I met them in the pub one night. I knew they had done a collaboration with Oi Polloi, so I just said to them cheekily, “We should do a collaboration”, not thinking anything of it, but funnily enough R. Newbold had based a lot of their collections on London style and so the idea was perfect for them.
When we started the project we wanted to make sure that it had a bit of a life, we didn’t want it to be a hit-and-run thing, collaboration for the sake of it, so we applied a long term approach to it. We’ve just released the 8th season and are in talks about a 9th.
What inspires you for each collection?
Listening to what people want, people we meet, talking to customers, taking in what we see here and on our travels. This current season we wanted get away from all the heritage stuff to do something that was more “streetwear”, that’s why we did the Way Back tee, sort of having a laugh with ourselves. We’re obviously very interested in heritage and it does influence our designs, but really the collection is what we’re feeling at that particular moment in time.
On your website you host your Store Styles to exhibit outfits of visitors to the store. What’s your take on blogging’s effect upon men and women’s style?
I think blogging is massively important right now — it’s bigger than magazines, which I feel have become stagnant. They started out being quite cool and about something real and cool or whatever. Now it’s about selling ad space to perfume and sunglass brands. I’d like to see blogs become more significant. Guys, particularly, want to obsess over products and girls are into what people are wearing and doing. East London, hate it or love it, is a global focal point and it is nice to know that someone in Australia can know what’s going on over here instantly via the blogs, news sites and online niche communities at the click of a mouse, and vice versa.
Following on from that, do you have any favourite print publications at the moment?
Monocle is the only magazine I really bother reading. It’s intelligible and an actual interesting read. Stylistically it’s not my cup of tea, but I like their content. Some of the mags we have in the store at the moment like Travel Almanac, Apartmento, Gentry Magazine and Champfest are all really good too. I even like getting in all the brand books, they’re usually quite interesting.
All these new publications are quite open and one thing we learnt when first starting out is that the established media is closed off, it’s quite often about their mate’s mate. It’s quite boring. It’s nice to see people have an open attitude to content and deciding for themselves.
What are your favourite brands at the moment?
Difficult to say. From what we stock there’s Norse [Projects] — they have great product and a great attitude, it’s easy to wear their stuff. Phenom, Yuketen, [Junya] Watanabe are all doing great things at the moment. I personally really like Unrivaled, I’ll buy something every season.
Favourite spots in London?
We’re very local, we pretty much never leave Shoreditch as everything is very convenient here. From the all pubs to places like Laxeiro, Brawn and my local grocers S. Jones on Columbia Road — a little old school grocery joint that hasn’t changed since the 30’s or something, where I pick up lovely bread.
What do you love and hate about London?
I like the people of East London, the diversity, the style and I love the architecture around here, it has a really unique look and feel.
I hate all the crackheads who rob bikes and threaten people with syringes.
Do you collect or hoard anything?
Yes, clothes. I have a massive archive. We come from a denim background, so I have a lot of special stuff that I can’t get rid of and will hopefully become relevant again. A lot of classic streetwear stuff. I used to collect trainers, but I’ve sold them all. I’m trying to get into a more transient lifestyle, where I wear something out and then get rid of it, replace it and not sit on it because my son might wear it in 25 years. He might love my sh*t, but he probably won’t.
Briefly describe your own style.
I’ve just been to the gym this morning and I forgot my jeans, this isn’t my usual look. My style is influenced by Japanese takes on our style, metal and rock, street. I used to dress like a bum, my thing was bum chic, but I stopped that. Grunge is massive influence for me, I grew up in the 90’s and I was into skateboarding. I skated for years and that’s affected the way that I dress and as I got older there were brands like Silas.
You’ve mentioned metal and skateboarding; people tend to forget that it’s had a quite an influential affect on streetwear e.g. brands like FUCT. Kids these days seem to think it comes from a more hip-hop aesthetic…
I think when streetwear became associated with hip-hop, New Era and matching Nike sneakers, it became a really cliched look and a bit of a joke. For me, when we talk about streetwear, it’s nothing to do with that — it’s about i-D magazine 15 years ago; Japanese takes on mixing stuff up with running shoes, fur coats, business shirts and tweed — mixing up styles. I think the hardest thing for us is to challenge people’s perception of what streetwear is. People hear the word ’streetwear’ and they instantly think that it’s like dressing like a baby wearing a blue t-shirt, blue sneakers and a New Era cap, and that’s not what it is.
What’s next for the Goodhood brand?
We’re starting our own label off the back of the store and we’re talking about opening another space, which should be happening in 2012. We’ve got a 4 month old kid who we need to see to/get to a certain age before we can get our heads down on all of that.
The Goodhood Store
41 Coronet Street
London
N1 6HD
The Goodhood Store
@goodhoodstore
GoodHood on FB
Words: Mister Ollie
Interview: Mister Ollie and Denis Yong
Photography: Mister Ollie
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