Club Monaco – Fun and Sunshine, there’s enough for everyone by Nicolas Payne-Baader

Screen Shot 2015-05-08 at 17.04.47Chiltern street is fast becoming another Mecca of Menswear, along with its cooler, drunker sibling Redchurch street and its older, more repressed sibling: Jermyn Street, Chiltern street is taking its place among the most desired spots for menswear and you can see why.

Now Home to Sunspel’s largest shop in London, the home of vintage Americana in the form of John Simon as well as the home of the excellent, forward thinking boutique Trunk. The Street of course also hosts a constant stream of celebrities that patronise Chiltern firehouse as well as the editorial team of Monocle pitching up on a daily basis outside their own cafe.

So really it should not be a surprise that it is now home to Club Monaco‘s newest shop.

Screen Shot 2015-05-08 at 17.05.27In case you are unfamiliar with Club Monaco it is somewhere between a version of Ralph Lauren (and it is owned by the Big Pony) for men who would never shop at such a well known name and a smaller, more exclusive J.Crew, at least that’s how they’re setting themselves up in the U.K. An international lifestyle brand that designs and creates modern yet timeless clothing and accessories. Since its first store opened in Toronto in 1985, the brand has been recognised by fashion influencers for its carefully considered designs and now have outlets as far as New York, Hong Kong and Macau.

The Chiltern Street shop offers a well curated collection of their wares, ranging from excellent summer light knitwear, casual shirting and formalwear all arranged over two small floors.

It is also one of the most perfectly executed shops I’ve ever seen, from the dark wood bench outside with neatly folded copies of Le Monde and El Pais to the polished stone floors to the hand picked antiques imported from Belgium that dress the shop. The whole place is set up in a series of rooms, all subtly different in design and laid out with the merchandise perfectly arranged to maximise exposure in what is a fairly small space.

Downstairs is possibly the piece de resistance in a kitchen and courtyard boasting a marble worktop imported again from Belgium and cut from one solid piece of stone, all designed so that customers can just come and have a sit, enjoy a coffee or a beer and pick some clothes.

It remains to be seen whether a shop can give over so much space to leisure and still be viable from a business perspective but we hope it will because there probably has never been a space that feels such an inviting place to shop.

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