“It should be fine,” says Kiko Kostadinov brightly last Friday afternoon — just as the urgent grind of a power drill sounds through the floor of his office. Beneath the new East London studio space Kostadinov and his team moved into in April, his third store is being fitted out. This Friday, 7 November, it will open with a show: the first ever to blend the menswear designed by Kostadinov himself with the womenswear created by Laura and Deanna Fanning.
The space is at 21 Whiston Road, near Columbia Road and Broadway Market. The studio occupies the first floor; the store below (mid-construction as we speak), will be shaped around a reassembled artwork by ongoing collaborators Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch. “It’s really an artwork recontextualized into a store,” Kostadinov says. “It’s exciting to keep the narrative between the three stores, Tokyo, LA and now London, all part of Ryan’s universe.” The installation piece arrives in 10 crates, and has yet fully to be pieced together: Kostadinov is confident of meeting Friday’s deadline.
The London space will complete a loose trilogy of ad hoc Kostadinov flagships that have grown independently. Tokyo opened in March 2024, followed by Los Angeles last November. “Tokyo is sustainable and solid,” he says. “LA is a bit intense; there, it’s a different way of shopping.” Each store operates with local programming and generates content through its own Instagram account. In LA, for instance, the store partners with Rocky Xu’s Rocky’s Matcha to host monthly breakfasts. London will follow a similarly organic rhythm, opening Thursday to Saturday, and maybe sometimes on Sunday to coincide with the Columbia Road Flower Market.
The store is a happy unintended consequence of Kostadinov and his team losing their previous creative home of 10 years, which was in Wood Green, when the building was put up for sale. The new address is leased until 2035, and came with the street-facing space on the ground floor. This, Kostadinov says, offers a way to redirect the energy of the studio into a public setting. “We wanted to use some of the budget that normally, maybe, goes on a photoshoot that dies on Instagram in five days to do something real here,” Kostadinov says. “I like building image, but not image with no substance. So we’re trying to balance image with something that people can come and engage with and touch.”
The DIY approach to retail is consistent with Kostadinov’s core approach to brand-building. “We never had an outside showroom,” he says. “We always wholesale our collections ourselves with our in-house commercial director. I’d rather do less and have full control rather than give it to someone and they run it. The more we do, the less I’m interested in doing deals with people for the brand.”
The show on Friday will be followed by a party down the road. The collection is called Dante, named after the designers’ Lakeland terrier, who has been a fixture in the studio since the pandemic. “He’s been to every single show since Covid,” says Kostadinov. “He’s the mascot.” Inspiration was taken from Oliver by Valentino, a 1986-founded line the Italian designer named after his pug. “We wanted to do a collection about the British countryside,” Kostadinov says, “but none of us are British except for Dante.”
A few preview glimpses hint at a lighthearted, material-rich exercise in texture and trope. Mohair and leather are treated to echo Dante’s wiry coat. There are graphics homaging fly-fishing brand Orvis, and Christmas cardigans and leather brimmed caps featuring the hound’s handsome image. But what if guests think Kostadinov and the Fannings are crazy dog people? “Well we are!” the designer says.
The Dante show will also mark the first public reveal of a ‘Made in England’ collaboration with Dr. Martens, plus a new Levi’s menswear capsule. Around half of the items shown will be available to purchase in the new store the next day. “See-now, buy-now, whatever that means.”
Laura says that she, Deanna and Kostadinov first aligned in the design of these co-ed parallel collections through their shared fabrics and common theme. “We could really connect with the narrative of it,” she explains. “We don’t have a country house, I guess that’s aspirational, but it was easy to build the world around the idea.” It is also the first time she and her twin sister Deanna, who have led the womenswear since 2018, have shown alongside Kostadinov’s menswear. Kostadinov and Deanna married last August: on the day of this interview, Deanna is at home with the new baby the couple recently welcomed (along with Dante).
Having a store below the studio, Kostadinov says, “is super old school. We can have dinners or screenings, maybe even the Champions League final, I don’t know.” (He supports Arsenal and Barcelona, in case you’re wondering.) The layout is flexible enough to allow for standing events or to seat 20 guests at a long table. Laura adds that it also provides a direct line of sight over how the brand’s clothes are presented to potential customers. “It’s very interesting when you see your pieces in retail,” she says. “This gives us the opportunity to have control over that.” Laura recently designed the wedding dress of i-D magazine’s Steff Yotka (formerly of this parish), and is musing tapping the new London space for further VIP appointments.
Kostadinov is looking forward to spending time on the shop floor. “I don’t know what people expect of designers these days — maybe to sit in a studio,” he says. “But if someone’s going to come, I’m happy to meet them. It’s exciting, not to makeover someone, but to explain the process.” He cites Giorgio Armani and Zegna’s Alessandro Sartori as two designers both known for spending time directly engaging customers.
Kostadinov’s approach to his third store is instinctive, and also subject to change. “No strategy is the strategy,” he says. The brand already has some impressive wholesale sites that include dedicated spaces across Dover Street Market in Singapore, New York, LA, Tokyo, Beijing and Paris. This home store-space will be intrinsically experimental. Of Friday’s show, Kostadinov adds: “We’re inviting people so they feel they’ve been asked to see a moment. And if it’s fun, maybe we’ll do this once a year, maybe next year in Tokyo.”
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