When Claire de Rouen opened her eponymous bookshop above a Soho sex store in 2005, she helped change how bookshops were curated and who they were for. The shop’s books and magazines spanned art, photography and fashion publications, and well-known names sat next to independent publications. It was all presided over by de Rouen who, with her black bob and Alaia wardrobe (fittingly, a Claire de Rouen outpost opened in London’s Alaia flagship in 2024, alongside a cafe from Violet Cakes), was herself a Soho institution. Visitors – which ranged from actors to fashion designers and photographers – were encouraged to linger and be creatively inspired.
It’s an approach and legacy that’s continued in the years since de Rouen’s passing in 2012, first under former director Lucy Kumara Moore, and now under new directors Chantal Webber and Dominic Bell. And Claire de Rouen’s new shop, below a rail bridge on Kingsland Road, is designed more than ever for lingering.
“The space is perfectly nuanced, allowing for books to be hidden in areas for visitors to find privacy and time to look over things,” Bell tells Broadsheet. “We want people to feel at ease in here, there’s no pretence and it should be an atmosphere of openness and curiosity.”
The team worked with Monument gallery to source furniture and shelving is by design practice Mentsen. “They’re beautifully functional but also resonate within the space as their own objects and design,” Bell says.
A bigger space – including a downstairs gallery – gives Bell and Webber more latitude to bring the subjects of the books Claire de Rouen stocks off the pages and into a programme of exhibitions, performances, talks and other events. The shop opened with an exhibition of vintage works by US photographer Nancy Honey, and already it’s hosted talks and book launches. “We’ve got more exhibitions planned, alongside screenings, performances and more intimate book clubs,” Bell says. “We can now display objects differently and more openly, bringing artworks into the space, pieces of ephemera from our special archive. There’s an aspect of the unknown to what we can do, which feels exciting.”
After 20 years, Claire de Rouen remains a magnet for the city’s creatives, who visit for its unique collection of books, which span from hard-to-find vintage fashion tomes, monographs from historic exhibitions, new volumes from leading photographers and artists (“we get a lot of direct approaches from fantastic artists and collaborators,” Bell says) to the esoteric likes of decades-old cookbooks with recipes from leading artists of the time, and goth erotica. “Claire de Rouen’s always actively looked to find a balance between the unknown or new, with the established and historic.”
Bell says the move to Shoreditch places the bookshop in the epicentre of the capital’s creative scene. “It’s a labyrinth inside, tucked under a railway bridge and surrounded by a brilliant local community of bookstores and galleries. Shoreditch feels creative again, like it’s gone full circle.”
Claire de Rouen
11A Kingsland Road, E2 8AA
Hours:
Tue to Sat 10am–6pm
