Modern Society

PB120594

One of my main daydreaming schemes is to open a store selling things gathered around the world on my travels, inspired by the retail scene in my beloved City of Angels. In case you aren’t familiar with said retail scene, it goes a little something like this: a wide, open space peppered with mid-century furniture, glass cabinets and a lot of plants. Sometimes there is a café where you can sit and laptop your life away, or flick through a cool lifestyle mag. They sell vintage clothing mixed in with a highly curated selection of hard to find luxury items and pointu European labels. This idea has been floating in my head for a while, I got to the point where I thought about sitting down to write a business plan for it, before realising that perhaps to me for now, this should be just a daydream.

You see whenever I find myself in Los Angeles, I love nothing more than wasting hours looking at every single trinket in those boutiques, often leaving with a couple new pieces of jewellery but not much more because of being suitcasely challenged. Every single time I visit a store like that in L.A. I think “Dang, I wish this existed in London“. Turns out my wishes have been granted by the Modern Society, which opened its first proper space at 33 Redchurch Street this Fall.

The selection of brands at the Modern Society is a perfect mix of (sometimes hard to find) European favourites (Prism, Zoe & Morgan, Isa Arfen, Être Cécile) and cool American labels (Pamela Love, Sandy Liang). Add to this an expertly curated collection of lifestyle accessories and homewares, as well as a cracking photography exhibition by one of my favourites, L.A. photographer George Byrne, and you have a picture perfect space that’s essentially like a home away from home, only way, way better.

And because you won’t want to leave the store once you are there, the good news is there is a coffee shop too, so you can set up camp there without looking overly suspicious. If you decide to try and spend the night though, you are on your own Charlie Brown.

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