LONDON — With its bowed Victorian front and custom cloth wallpaper, Thames MMXX’s first permanent shop on Soho’s Brewer Street is far from the typical streetwear brand setup. And so are the products, with cricket sweaters, pastel polos and fine jewelry displayed next to graphic T-shirts and skateboarding decks.
“I’ve got nothing against football tops or shell suit tracksuits, for instance, but I feel like we’ve had so much of that. Now, the more interesting thing is being traditional,” explained the brand’s founder, British skateboarder and designer Blondey McCoy.
Thames MMXX store on London’s Brewer Street.
McCoy’s clearly struck a chord, with customers flooding Soho’s Brewer Street for the store’s opening. While many flocked to grab a punchy T-shirt, McCoy said an unexpected crowd favorite was the brand’s prefect-inspired enamel shield pins, which come in a variety of colorways.
“We’ve been making them every few months for the last seven years and they’ve always done OK. But now, with physical stock, people pilfer through a big bowl of them,” he explained. “Because you’re picking two or three out of 100, it’s an opportunity for personalization and an experience, which rivals the convenience of online.”
The brand’s keen sense of skateboarding’s subversive culture has captured an enthusiastic following, which McCoy has steadily built since bursting onto the U.K.’s skating scene in his early teens and launching his label around the same time in 2012.
A wax foguire of Blondey McCoy at the Thames MMXX store on London’s Brewer Street.
Two years later, the label teamed up with Palace Skateboards, with McCoy relaunching it as an independent business in 2019 under the name Thames MMXX. Since then, the brand has collaborated with artists including the Francis Bacon Estate and the Pet Shop Boys.
While McCoy said he’s focused on refining the shop, he teased that the brand has a series of exciting upcoming launches later in the year.
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