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p9
Where do men go wrong?
Let me rephrase that the question's perhaps a little too ambitious for a lowly fashion
piece. Where do men go wrong when they're buying clothes?
According to young Perry Andre, one of the three principals behind one of Stoke
Newington's newer sartorial landmarks, Redman, they're just way too timid. They think they
know what they want which is another, preferably slightly cleaner version of something
they're already wearing. In more or less the same colour. Nightmare.
Redman's mission (well, part of it anyway) is to change all that: new menswear for new men
some their own range, some from suitably 'urban' style merchants like Sun and Sand (one
of their best sellers), Kronk and Putsch. To hedge their bets, they're also selling
clothes lots of them to discerning young women (who, of course, are effortlessly
knowledgeable in these things, require no coaching in matters retail and are fully
conversant in the use of plastic to relieve stress ): tees, tanks, combats, skirts,
trousers in almost any leg length you could imagine and then some, big shirts, little
shirts, shirts with epaulettes, shirts printed with enormous and very beautiful lions and
tigers and what looks to me like a pretty exhaustive range of other 'stuff'. All very
young, very funky, very gritty it takes streetwear to a different level, and it does so
at outrageously keen and probably better-than-elsewhere prices.
A controllable overhead was one of the reasons for coming to Stoke Newington in the first
place, but ever the newshound, I sensed other more compelling reasons for Redman's arrival
on the Church Street scene. And I was right, of course. Years of exhaustive retail
research, maybe? Detailed three-year business plans, perhaps? Much better: Perry and his
two partners, Essex boys Mark and Peter Readman, asked a cab driver... Perry does
originally come from Lambeth (that's South of the River, to you), so perhaps we shouldn't
be surprised...
Nearly a year after their opening, in October 1998, Redman have toughed it out pretty
well, and are already making ambitious plans for the future, fitting their plans for
global garment domination around occasional bouts of drinking and football (don't ask
they might not be Arsenal supporters...). They're beginning to source more of their own
designs locally, building on the area's historic ragtrade connections, and there's talk of
possible expansion.
Perry and the brothers Readman like Church Street, and they're keen on their customers
'a pretty funky bunch of people', it seems, and probably as cool as the guys who run the
joint, judging from appearances. Redman, the clothes shop that thinks it's a coffee bar,
is perfect for boho twenty-somethings and then some, say I, as long as you don't fall over
the artistically arranged pebbles the bits of Southend beach that appear to have
strayed on to the floor of the shop at high tide.
Chilled to perfection ... |
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