One thing the Swedes should be exporting…

…is Monki!
My new-found-joy job at COS might take the precious Christmas holiday (read: trip to Sweden) away from me, so I’ll be just as joyfully planning a small city trip to Stockholm. There are plenty of places to visit (and to visit again) but I’m just turning green of envy seeing what wonders of fashion Swedish ladies get to shop. I dropped by Monki on my last visit to Stockholm, and actually bought something surprisingly complex, surprisingly timeless, surprisingly great quality and surprisingly cheep – and all in all Monki is just a chain of stores of H&M equivalent, but surprisingly cool. Now browsing through their website makes me quietly utter ‘grrrr, where’s my holiday’.

dirty projectors

the ultimate guide to Amsterdam shopping (the finale)

Tasty little tidbits…let’s crack my Tuesday in Amsterdam open like an Easter egg ( why am I thinking of Easter? May be because of the amount of cheesecakes, muffins, chocolate and koffie verkeerd I managed to consume on that Tuesday morning waiting for the shops to open…)

Tuesday AM began at 12 o’clock:
And it began with a visit to the great place – Wella Warenhaus on Keizersgracht 300 ( that’s on the corner of Berenstraat). There you find designs by Nes – bright, bold and very cheerful,

jewellery by Nadine Kieft, such as the deer patches with silver dangles, furniture and design objects by Huh/Karel, among which are the impressive plain cupboards with what-they-are-meant-to-be prints on them.

Downstairs is a vast space with a lot of very well selected and very well presented vintage clothes by Cherry Sue, shoes and objects. Grouped by colour not function these objects are becoming some sort of a surreal setting – concrete garden with plastic flowers – you can’t find a place more cheerful!

It is now worth to mention that the entire trip around Amsterdam shopping hot spots is a very structured walking path: across the water from the Individuals and to the right you will find a small quartier of parallel streets crossed by three canals, so called ‘de 9 straatjes’, a couple of more places at Rozengracht and a couple of places that fall out of the map, but are equally worth to visit. So if you are spending time in Amsterdam prior to shop opening hours or just simply like to stick your nose into shop windows, here are few.
One tiny little gallery that caught my eye in ‘de 9 straatjes’ neighbourhood is Galerie Knap, and it’s fuzzy knitted creature in the window.

Then there’s another one, more like a must-walk-in place – Finnish design shop Kauppa. With so few retail points of my wildly adored IVANAhelsinki and Globe hope this shop is a rare find. You can enjoy the wonders of Finnish design at Norden in Brussels (Arteveldestraat) and Halla in Antwerp, but none of them sell Globe hope, only the on-line shop http://www.finnishdesignshop.com/.
Then there’s Lock, Stock & Barrel, very cute and clever little boutique for both men and women. They have a nice selection of brands like Filippa K, Stine Goya, again IVANAhelsinki, and so on.

Now walking out of this little street cluster onto the Rozengracht you will find to particular places:
Vezjun – a shop where young designers and fashion students sell their work (and it was unfortunately closed, hence the reflection of my camera and my nose peeking in the window):

and a rather well known store SPRMRKT which used to sell young designers’ work, but now is better known for Acne, Rick Owens, etc…

christian wijnants

Just enought time to earn some pocket money on ebay...
Christian Wijnants Stocksale:
5, 6, 7 December 2007
Brederodestraat 2
2018 Antwerpen

My feeble attempt to recreate the wonder

…and the wonder’s name is the fabulous Yves Saint Laurent sock-shoe from just as fabulous s/s 2008 collection:

So I started by demolishing one shoe just to figure out how the shoes are constructed – well, healthy dose of deconstructivism it was. Who knew that older shoes will have countless number of nails and sticky gooey glue inside, it seems to be that breaking a Zara shoe is a better idea, since those one-seasoners do not really need much help in breaking, but yeah, I resorted to an ugly second-hand shoe for the lack of ugly Zara shoe…then I pulled a black knee sock over the inner sole and… realised that gluing and nailing the outer sole back in place is virtually impossible without any professional glue, foot-dummy and very short shoemaker nails ( otherwise it will be an extreme yoga-sock-shoe), hmmmm.

Now, the question remains: do I go to the shoemaker and embarrass myself completely by asking to glue a heel to my sock? Followed by a sub-question: does showing him a picture of the original change anything?

the ultimate guide to Amsterdam shopping (part 2)

Monday PM:
So as I mentioned before (did I?) the shops in Amsterdam open at noon on Mondays, so be prepared for that…as well as being prepared for being limited to one afternoon to see all the beauties that the city has to offer, and first on the list is the Individuals Statement Store. It is located at Spui, hose nr. 23 – the initiative of the Hogeschool van Amsterdam and is designed, marketed and produced by the young creatives of Amsterdam Fashion Institute. So what you get at this simple and rather well presented store is not a random fashion statement, but a collection designed by the students of the 3rd year of fashion design, with each design produced in quantity of only 8 pieces. Winter 7 is a contrast of rough and shiny materials and a clash of spicy brique and old lady grey colours, the pieces are created for the layering, but do stand out on their own and create a simple, yet very personal silhouette, since the ways of wearing it and combining with other clothes are infinite.

Presentationwise, the hangers spattered in paint do the trick, as well as a weekly-changing shop window. Every time one designer is invited to present their work together with sketches, books and any other relevant creative objects…so I found a black stuffed fish – the distant echo of the fish prints on jersey tops. Alongside the AMFI student collective work you can find accessories from Flo and Arvid van Schaller.

You next stop should be at Rika. And yep, I’m advertising it here, but I got very kindly kicked out of that place and been told not to touch the new collection, and not allowed to take pictures…hmm, is it for the scruffy leather jacket…but nomatter now paranoid some creative people get ( we’ve all heard about the thin line between the madman and the genius), the shop is pricy, but definitely attractive. The small place is shared between Rika – the house brand, and several other ones, the names of which I, unfortunately, did not manage to jot down. Anyhow, Rika is on Wolvenstraat, and very much worth to visit.

Next up is Sky at Herengracht 228:

this shop is a mixture of A.P.C., Isabel Marant, Humanoid, Prairies de Paris, etc…so very much like the stuff that we get at Icon in my almost native city of Brussels, but I did manage to dig out one Amsterdam native gem – Iefke de Roos. She makes beautiful hand printed motifs on simple cotton tunics, dresses, bags and brooches, and her drawings are fragile and feminine.

*pictures of Iefke de Roos' collection by Claire Witteveen

the ultimate guide to Amsterdam shopping (part 1)

So here it is – my first shopping guide! Hopefully this is not my last city trip in which I get to cover the shopping side so extensively. The two-day visit to Amsterdam resulted in an endless (or almost) list of ‘must visit’ shops. This list will be delivered to you in several parts (to keep things more exciting), photos and addresses included.

Well, some general thoughts on the city…it does feel terribly hectic over there, and I’m not used to such hustle and bustle, you can imagine the ‘dead town’ of Kortrijk is a great contrast to the narrow streets and incredibly tall people (the latter did not bother me actually, on the contrary I did not feel like a giant anymore, and finding shoe-size 44 for women turned me into the little quiet mouse once again). I was happy to be out of there, but I will be just as happy to come back to Amsterdam to say hello to all the friendly and creative folk I have met in those two days.

Monday AM:
Actually, if you are clever, you will stay within the comfort of your hotel room on the rainy Monday morning, because all the shops on the high street are open at 11, and the ones that are more creative at 12 or 1 o’clock in the afternoon. So the desperate shoppers will have to spend their time rummaging in the vintage-princess paradise – Laura Dolls in the Wolvenstraat. This is probably the most famous vintage shop in town (after Episode, but we do have a local version in Antwerp, so why bother), I often see references to it in the Dutch fashion magazines, as they sell not your average vintage, but all glitzy, sparkly, shiny stuff, there’s even a section with figure-skating outfits (um, someone tell Susie)

This is obviously not the shop where me personally would cash out…an obsession with Nordic aesthetics keeps me away from becoming a magpie, but I did put on a pair of the brightest bright heels to keep my feet happy (the head is obsessed, not the feet, right?)