After the launch of their concept store back in November, LN-CC has changed the way we shop. By appointment only, this Dalston destination is a diamond in the rough.
Since its launch LN-CC has become a brand in its own right, being the first of its kind to bring together fashion, PR and music culture via six bespoke rooms including several smartly curated clothes areas, a music and literature cove and a party space complete with a spinning disco ball. Successfully mixing high end designers including Ann Demeulemeester, Rick Owens and Maison Martin Margiela with newer designers such as J.W Anderson and Nonnative, LN-CC has attracted media attention, top stylists and customers worldwide. After hearing about a rather generous competition (the grand prize of £15,000 to spend in-store, as well as three nights in a hotel), i-D Online caught up with one half of the brains behind the project, John Skelton, to see what he’s got up his roomy sleeve.
What plans do you have to make sure LN-CC continues to grow? For us it’s not so much about it growing, although hopefully it will, it’s more about making sure we keep ahead of the game with what we’re doing and making sure we keep true to ourselves.
You’re the first concept store to bring together PR, shopping, books, fashion and music. How has this worked out for the company? I guess it’s given us that extra edge to other retail set-ups. We are trying to be more like a brand rather than just a store, so the fact we have our own PR in-house obviously works for us. The books and the music are very important to us as people, which is why we’ve brought it into our concept. Nobody’s really taken the books and music to the level we have, I think that has given us an extra edge.
Is there anything else you would like to add to the store in the near future, such as art work? Yes, we’re actually going to open an exhibition space in mid June. We’re launching on June 16th with a solo show from Richie Culver, who is an up and coming artist at the moment and one of our close friends. We’re also going to be having a tattoo studio in the store, that’s in the process of being set up now.
At the moment your menswear selection dominates over womenswear. Do you plan to increase womenswear stock? Yes, definitely. The womenswear has been a little slower to get going because we didn’t really have any history with it, but I think over the coming two seasons we’ll achieve a 50/50 split, I think at the moment it’s 60/40, but we’ve bought more womenswear for next season including brands such as Junya Watanabe, Dries Van Noten and Guidi. I think we’ve probably got around fifty brands for men and fifty for women altogether and we’re also opening a new womenswear focused concept room later in the summer.
Do you have your eye on any brands you’d like to work with in the future? Yes, I mean to be honest we’ve had a really good success rate considering who we pulled in for the first few seasons. Aside from the mainline brands, we’ve pretty much got everyone we want right now. There’s always a few brands out there we’d like to get and who we’ve been in touch with but we don’t have much resistance with what we want to do now and we’re really pushing ourselves forward with, not only the clothing, but taking leather, accessories and footwear to the next level.
What events do you have coming up? We’re going to launch theNumber (N)ine archive, which we’re very happy to have. It’s the last stock from those guys so I think two years after they’ve closed the doors on it, it’s a good time to bring it back. We’re also going to launch Richard Culver’s solo show, which will be 15th June and will run for a month. It will be a huge event, we’ve already had loads of press coverage and interest from people wanting to buy his stuff.
Do you have any plans to open any more stores in London or worldwide in the future? No, I don’t think so. Never say never, but I feel that our website is almost our store for the rest of the world. I don’t feel we could create the same environment unless we were actually there doing it, because this place changes on a daily basis. Everything that goes into every single room and every buy and the way we PR ourselves, it’s with love. We don’t want to start just rolling stuff out and let it become formulaic.
LN-CC are currently offering one lucky person the chance to win £15, 000 to spend in store, plus travel (inc. flights to the UK for international readers) To enter simply visit ln-cc.com and recommend two people you think should know about LN-CC.
