On Shopkeeping

I once read somewhere that Paul Smith referred to himself as a shopkeeper from Nottingham. Paul Smith was a brand I looked up to a lot as a teenager in the 90s, and my first jobs when I was in college were all working in clothes shops.

Over the 12 years or so that Tender Stores has been online I’ve really enjoyed and appreciated the retail part of my work. Alongside design, production, presenting and selling to stockists, and all the logistics and paperwork of running a business it’s nice to have direct contact with the people who are choosing to buy and wear my things. The Stores has always operated from home, in our front room in London until 2014, then from a studio at the end of the garden in Stroud until this summer. Now, though, the newly minted Tender Clothing LLC has a home of its own, at Four Gay Street, Phoenixville.

As I write this we’ve only had the lease for a couple of weeks and there’s still a lot to sort out, but it’s been exciting creating a (slightly) less cramped space for stock, with somewhere to take product photos, and a clear workbench.

I’ve always liked the thought of looking in the back for something not on show on the shop floor, and working in shops the stockroom has been my favourite place, so as Four Gay Street is primarily a stockroom for orders placed online it’s laid out back to front- the front of the shop is the stockroom, with a smaller space behind where things can be presented for the website, and I can sell and pack orders.

Speaking of which, the shirts I’m wearing and photographing in these pictures are from a short run of Type 422 Square Tail Shirts, cut from a lower tension two-ply version on the indigo Welsh Stripes and Checks that ended up being woven for production as a flatter, lighter weight cloth. The texture in these low-tension shirts is really special, and perfect as the weather cools. The indigo bleeds gently into the ecru yarn, and is set off really nicely by the oversized deadstock melamine navy catseye buttons.