Twenty-five years ago, menswear designers Rachel Wythe-Moran and Simon Watkins came up with a novel idea: to open a general store filled with honest, useful items that were made to last.
They weren’t interested in decorative show-pony products, but instead well-designed everyday objects: an enamel bread bin, Brown Betty teapots or clothes pegs. It was a hard sell in 2000, when the concept of sustainability wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is now, but their brainwave resulted in one of London’s most successful and unique retail stories: Labour and Wait. It turned out that reliable, utilitarian items could be every inch as desirable as a luxury handbag or a pair of designer shoes. Its original (now-closed) store opened on Cheshire Street, and there are outposts in Shoreditch and Marylebone, as well as a branch in Tokyo. Now it’s opened its latest – and largest – store, in Covent Garden.
Wythe-Moran and Watkins searched long and hard before deciding on a mid-19th-century former seed merchant on Dryden Street. It’s heavy on character, the result of a renovation led by Wythe-Moran to spotlight vaulted arches, exposed brick and ironwork. The original signage, which appears in large script on a wall, serendipitously reads Watkins. “It’s a coincidence isn’t it,” says Watkins. “We like this little corner, it feels tucked away somehow. We looked at a few different locations nearby, but they all felt too glammed up. We knew we didn’t want a typical glass-fronted store; it had to feel like us.”
The store is stocked with the utilitarian treasures that Labour and Wait is known for: its bestselling brown canvas aprons, milk pots, cotton neckerchiefs, candles, canvas bags, mechanics’ hats and enamel lampshades. But there are also larger garden tools, and an extended range from much-loved Norfolk clothing company Old Town, known for its pared-down utility-wear. Labour and Wait is the only place you can buy its pieces off the rack.
“We only stock clothes that wear well, that age really nicely,” says Watkins, highlighting that the store’s apparel tends to be unisex. “In a lot of stores there’s a bias towards womenswear, [but] not here. We’re always so pleased to hear when men tell us they usually hate shopping, but they like it here.”
Reaching a quarter-century of operations is an impressive milestone for a company built on slowing things down and selling items that will last. “No one understood it at the time, this was when the internet was just kicking off,” says Watkins. “But pretty much as soon as we opened our original shop on Cheshire Street, we realised people did really want functional items that they’ll have for a very long time.”
Stock is sourced from international artisans and many pieces have beguiling backstories: tactile Welsh blankets woven on a 1930s loom for decades by an 80-year-old miller, or handcrafted willow baskets, traditionally used for fishing or foraging for ormer (shellfish) on the shores of Guernsey, made by the island’s last basket maker. Once the owners find a supplier they rarely change their mind about it. Everything on the shelves at Labour and Wait encapsulates its ethos: slowing down and waiting for the results of your labour.
“We didn’t like the speed and pressure to buy new things constantly, and everything felt over-designed,” says Wythe-Moran. “Even today, our staff are never pushy with sales. We want people to really think about whether they want something before they buy it. They can always come back; that product will still be here.”
Labour and Wait Covent Garden
12 Dryden Street, WC2E 9NA
020 7729 6253
Hours:
Mon to Sat 11am–7pm
Sun 11am–6pm
