KING'S CROSS

The renaissance of King’s Cross continues with the new Carhartt WIP flagship showroom, conceived and realised throughout by designer Faye Toogood. In keeping with the label’s heritage of recasting workwear as a subcultural uniform, the space has a rugged quality, from its aggregate-concrete flooring up to a ceiling festooned with serried banks of pendant lamps. The displays are crafted from appropriately utilitarian and durable materials in warm tones of deep brown and tan – wall panels of rugged canvas and graphic, freestanding custom-moulded units, which can be relocated and recombined to create a continually evolving retail environment.

Carhartt’s celebration of honest labour is also given form via postindustrial brass fixtures, and switches crafted from transparent glass to highlight their internal workings. The aesthetic uniformity extends to the store’s changing rooms and cafe bar, while a dedicated archive zone is equipped with custom-built pigeonhole cabinets of oiled Valchromat with protective grilles of heavy black mesh. Outside the showroom, sculptural concrete seating allows the store to function as a meeting point for like-minded people, cementing the idea of King’s Cross – and the Carhartt showroom – as a destination in its own right.

Photography: French + Tye