East End shop owners Kyle Stewart and Jo Sindle choose their favourite items from their new lifestyle space
London’s East End has, in the last few years, extensively expanded its shop repertoire. And not just with any odd shop, there’s now top notch stores around, the likes of which we were only able to be find in Soho a while back. Until a few years ago, East London was where creative products were designed, not sold. The people living in Shoreditch and Hackney had style but no money, at least that was the general idea. Something, somewhere changed that and today, when walking the streets of Shoredtich, there’s a handful of qualitative multi-brand stores available to us. One of them, the Goodhood store, just off Old Street, has been open for years, bringing us fine threads from the likes of Junya Watanabe, Wood Wood, Norse Project, Head Porter Plus, Soulland and Marwood, to mention but a few.
Now, shortly after the store celebrated its fifth anniversary, owners Kyle Stewart and Jo Sindle decided to open up a brand new lifestyle store across the street from the existing space. Located on Coronet Street, the small space sell the essential bits and bobs that each every self-respecting home needs; beautiful products for the kitchen, living room, hallway, bedroom and loo. Sindle and Stewart has applied the same curatorial aspect on the Life Store as they do on the clothes. The result is a collection of not only beautiful objects, but products that serve a purpose – style and substance hand in hand, at last. To cerebrate the recent opening, we asked the couple to pick their five favourite items…
Knight Mills x Goodhood Rug
Jo Sindle: “A beautiful rug is of great importance to any home; they add a different layer to each room, and in a way tie everything together. A bare floor needs a rug to add a layer of comfort and cosiness also. Being cosy and comfortable is the most important factor to a good life. We chose to work with Knight Mills because of the Native American Influence which I have always been a fan of. The grey palette used adds our signature Goodhood aesthetic to the design, meaning that we now have a personal rug to grace our living room. The hand-loomed imperfect nature of the weave just adds that extra bit of special.”
Midori Pencil
Kyle Stewart: “This pencil is extraordinary and makes an everyday item a thing of class and beauty. The Japanese are on a whole new level with thier stationary and we wanted to bring a taste of it home. It makes sense to extend your thirst for style into things that are around you daily. You don’t often see brass metal used in homeware so it’s something that catches my eye. Midori have introduced it into a variety of their stationary.”[/one_half]
Tivoli Pal BT
Kyle Stewart: “This is an absolute necessity in improving your life. An audio device that sounds amazing, is wireless, portable and weatherproof whilst at the same time fits in perfectly with the rest of your home. So many speaker systems are so ugly and oddly shaped. This ones compact, and can slip in you bag for days out, or works for when you want some loud music in the shower. Basically a subtle and attractive object that makes music easy 24,7.”
Hay Flowerpot with Saucer
Jo Sindle: “This is truly one of my favourite pieces, a basic plant pot. I’m obsessed with concrete, and whilst it looks quite harsh it’s so cute at the same time. I have 10 of these in my home already, and they bring a sense of industrial to the cosiness.”
Gelchop
Kyle Stewart: “I guess this piece has the biggest story behind it. We first saw one of these logs on a trip in Japan years ago, and loved it. A few years later on a late night stroll in L.A. we saw it in a shop window. The next day we went back to buy it and carried it back as hand luggage on the plane home to the UK. Now we are the only UK stockist and proud to be. They are very rare, and a piece of art that can be interpreted in many ways. It could be an ornament for the home, a footstool or whatever you want it to be. It just looks really cool.”
The Goodhood Life Store, 20 Coronet Street, London, N1 6HD
