Eyewear style in the heart of east London

Hook LDN recently opened its first standalone store on Redchurch Street in Shoreditch, London. 

The British eyewear brand, established in May 2014, launched its initial collection in 2015 and has opened its pop up store in the heart of east London’s style quarter, to appeal to the area’s young fashionable consumers. 

The popup store features a boutique style layout with the colourful spring/summer 2017 collection displayed around the shop floor.  

Inspired by music, fashion and London culture, the brand was established by founder Zak Biddu, a music producer and artist manager who wanted to create a brand that his artists could wear but that also had a legacy. 

Describing the Hook LDN concept, managing director, Simon Goodfellow, said: “Hook LDN has music as its central pillar, it’s the DNA that runs through everything that we do from the colours, style, collection and frame names – the inspiration draws from music.”

“We try not to follow trends too much because as a brand we should innovate, it’s always young, it’s vibrant and not always following the norm,” he added.

Explaining how the style-led brand has evolved and continues to be innovative, Mr Goodfellow said: “We first launched with a small capsule range of brightly coloured optics frames and sunglasses, since then its expanded to a much wider range. In each season, we continue to evolve and develop but always keep the music DNA at the heart of everything that we do.”

Experimenting with introducing new materials and different densities to the range is a key inspiration in the current collection and for upcoming designs in 2017—2018.

Mr Goodfellow told OT: “We are focusing on introducing into the range a lot more metal and wire, we’ve seen it at the tradeshows and within our own collection. There’s that flipside of things being very heavy with a lot of tortoiseshell frames to going a lot lighter now, for example our ‘Apex’ glasses. People are challenging the norm and trying to bring something new to it.”

The company has opened the popup store on a three-month trial period until the end of July to see how the collection, particularly the sunglasses, sell throughout the summer and plan to open a permanent store in August. 

Commenting on the experience so far, Mr Goodfellow said: “Traffic to the store has been busy. It’s a great for us, we have had a lot of good feedback on the range and products so far and we are pleased and we hope it continues through the summer.”

“We aim to expand in to retail with plans to open at least three to four more locations, predominantly in London,” he added.