Famously launching a fashion empire (Red or Dead) with his life-partner Geraldine off the back of their Camden Market thrift stall in the 80s, Wayne Hemingway continues to be a leader in the transformative power of rummaging around for a stylish bargain. As his Classic Car Boot Sale returns to King’s Cross this weekend, and with its offshoot Charity Super.Mkt busy redefining high street retail all over the country, who better to be the latest Guest Editor of Camdenist…

“We ran our very first Classic Car Boot Sale in 2012 on the Southbank, and the mix of vintage cars, music and fashion was an immediate hit. We lost that site when they went and built flats over it, but that coincided with Granary Square becoming a brand new public space. At Hemingway Design, as urban designers we could see that what was planned for King’s Cross was going to become very special indeed for London.

We actually used Stable Street for the first one, and thousands of people turned up. You couldn’t move. So we expanded into the square and from there it just grew. I think the reason it’s become so successful is that it has become London’s ‘go to’ public fashion event; it’s all about the people-watching.

It also brings together everybody from the history of UK club culture across the decades, and obviously King’s Cross was a big part of that history, with its famous warehouse venues. Old friends of mine, like Kevin Rowland of Dexys Midnight Runners or Corinne Drewery from Swing Out Sister, through to the new generation who come for the music and discover the history of design through incredible fashion, homewares and cars.

You just see the most amazing looking young people - and dogs - wherever you look. We’ve got to be one of the most diverse events in London in terms of age, as well as origins. When we open at 10am there’s a big queue of people who’ve travelled down from all over the country, plus loads of Japanese and Korean collectors who have flown over especially, all trying to get the best pickings. How you try to be the first to get around over 100 stalls I don’t know!

It’s become a big party - with a purpose. We got involved with the retail development of Coal Drops Yard from the beginning, advocating for the charity Shelter to have a shop there. King’s Cross is now a ‘must visit’ destination, but Hemingway Design also works in parts of the UK that have been left behind. Places like seaside towns with high streets that have gone into a spiral of decline now people would rather holiday in Spain.

Charity shops take up the slack in a lot of these places, and there’s a narrative that once they move in, your town is finished. But that’s just wrong. We’d try and explain to these town’s officials that there’s a badge of honour about wearing secondhand clothes, attracting exactly the type of demographics they want in their town centres, but it was falling on deaf ears.

So we set out to prove it. We invited a load of charities along to the Classic Car Boot Sale to gather some empirical evidence. We knew from the Shelter shop that charity could work in Coal Drops Yard - and from day one, it just did. The events were a blast. Each time we came, the other shops in Coal Drops got an uplift in trade equivalent to a pre-Christmas Saturday trading.

Then developers started calling us, saying ‘we’ve got an empty Debenhams, can you do one there, too’? The first Charity Super.Mkt was at Top Shop in Brent Cross, and that was so exciting because it was the old stomping ground of Philip Green, of whom I’m not a big fan. The whole place hadn’t been touched, (except the changing rooms, which had loads of anti-Philip Green graffiti, so we left that). We changed the signage to Charity Super.Mkt using the Top Shop branding, and they’d even left all the Top Shop bags, so we used those and everything else, too.

The upshot was that we increased footfall in Brent Cross Shopping Centre by 7%. We aimed to take £40k and ended up taking £375k, and the charities couldn’t believe what was going on. We’ve since been able to take the concept to those smaller towns and cities all over the country, and have now raised £2.8m - and counting - for charity.

We’ve filled empty spaces on high streets, bringing new customers and also creating happiness, running always-popular things like mending and creative workshops, basically ticking all the right boxes. As urban designers, with our events experience, we can bring that kind of thinking to turn these places around. We don’t just do the theory - we actually go out and do it.”

The Classic Car Boot Sale returns for its big autumn fixture at King’s Cross this Saturday and Sunday. Tickets and info. 

❎ Coal Drops Yard is ‘saved’!

We were going to run an accompanying Camenist.com piece alongside Wayne’s editor’s intro, with his thoughts on the potential loss of the central space at CDY - pictured above -to a permanent ‘retail pavilion’. However, at the 11th hour, word arrived from Save Coal Drops Yard spokesperson, Martin Rynja, that their resident’s group had been successful in getting King’s Cross estate owner, Related Argent, to have a change of heart (with a little help from a high profile newspaper article by Anthony Gormley, to get things really motoring).

Interestingly enough, Hemingway wasn’t against the plan, despite its potential impact on his company’s pop-up events. “I think I'd rather congratulate them on the generosity of public space at King’s Cross,” he told us. ‘It’s a luxury for a developer to have included something on the scale of Granary Square in their plans, so that something like Classic Car Boot can even happen. And you’ve also got Lewis Cubitt Square and the grassy park space beyond. The generosity of all that space is unparalleled.”

As with any urban area, change is the only constant, so expect more ideas on the delicate business of making CDY more accessible to a wider variety of shoppers, without turning it into an identikit brand line-up…coming soon.

FOOD & DRINK

Indulge in a spot of urban farming this weekend

The change in season is producing a bumper crop of lovely autumnal celebration events right now, in the green pockets that temper all the concrete, steel, bricks and glass of city living. Here’s our pick…

🍏 Kentish Town’s fantastic local produce scheme VegBox are holding their annual apple pressing and mulling fiesta this Saturday, 28th Sept. All the fruit has been collected from London’s apple trees, helping to reduce waste and provide delicious, nutritious drinks free for all. It’s all taking place at Gospel Oak’s London School of Mosaic, alongside the hidden gem that is the Mother Canteen, where you can grab a cake, coffee or lunch.

🫘 Swap seeds and discover new varieties to try in your garden next season, from heirloom vegetables to rare flowers, up at OmVed Gardens Autumn Seed Swap in Highgate, also this Saturday afternoon. It’s a chance to explore the gardens in early autumn, and you can check out sound workshops and kids activities, too.

🪴There's a herbalism workshop at Castlehaven Community Hub garden where you can get an introduction to herbal medicine and quaff a selection of hearbal teas at a special tasting, also on Saturday afternoon.

🧱 Why not make a full day of it, by finally also dropping in at Skip 2 Brick, all Saturday afternoon until 7pm? It’s a one-day festival to mark not only 20 years of Global Generation growing food around King’s Cross, but also the last hurrah for The Story Garden, which is moving one last time, from its current site behind the British Library to a new, permanent(!) home, up on York Way. Expect live music, botanical cocktails, pizzas, crafting workshops and loads more.

MORE FOOD NEWS

📦 Boxpark Camden opens at Buck Street this weekend, with live music and DJs, day and night, on Saturday 28th. The containers have all been spruced up, with lots of new food offerings, larger bar areas taking over the site of former cocktail terrace The Spirited and the odd cyber silent disco, and a roof is going on the courtyard next, allowing for a programme of all kinds of events.

🦁 West Hampstead boozer The Black Lion is throwing a launch party for The Local, their brand new night celebrating local drinks (which can be sampled), live music, and pints and prizes up for grabs in the ‘Local Limbo’ stakes - if you dare…

🦀 Sad news from the hospitality frontline this week in that esteemed seafood and wine canal cruise pioneers London Shell Co are stopping both their floating restaurants. You can catch the final cruises on The Prince Regent until Oct 13th, while the Paddington Basin-moored The Grand Duchess winds up this Saturday night. Thankfully, the crew can still be found on dry land up at their fishmonger-cum-diner on Swains Lane, at Parliament Hill.

ART

Let’s go outside, even if it’s Frieze-ing

As ever, it’s well worth a gander across the lower reaches of Regent’s Park right now, as the free public art bonanza Freize Sculpture is currently on display around every bush. It paves the way for the influx of global art types at the main event (starting 9th Oct) where 160 galleries from 43 different countries will be exhibiting work at Frieze London and Frieze Masters.

Also happening in the great outdoors is the last weekend of the epic London Mural Festival, which has seen tours, workshops and over 100 brand new commissions going up on walls all over town over recent weeks. Catch the final painting in session, but hopefully the pieces will be around for a lot longer.

There’s been much consternation that the famous Simpsons mural on the side of The Old Eagle pub in Royal College Street has been painted over. Locals insist it is due to complaints about the constant stream of people snapping themselves ‘sitting’ on the iconic cartoon sofa by mounting a well-placed broadband junction box, but rumours also abound of a new artwork, so don’t have a cow, man, let’s wait and see what goes up next.

Camden Open Air Gallery currently has a new show from artist Miguel H. Cuar entitled ‘Where To Next?’. His razor sharp cartoon-influenced style painted in the very brightest of eye-popping colours look fabulous. See (and buy) them at COAG until 20th October. 

The diminutive Spring Up Art gallery, tucked away in an NW5 backwater, currently has an exhibition of work from locally based artist Jonathan Ellis, who captures the energy and movement of live musicians in his colourful oil paintings.

And talking of hidden gallery spaces in NW5, just opened at the Kentish Town Heath Centre on Bartholomew Rd, Mondays Are Beautiful is a show of various works by five Camden-based artists who are all based at the ActionSpace-supported studio at Cockpit Bloomsbury in Holborn. It runs until January 6th.

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MUSIC

🎺 Broad styles and strokes for folks

🎙️ The crowd-pleasing House Gospel Choir take to Camden Market’s Amphitheatre from 4pm-6pm this afternoon, so try and swing by for a post-work dance and singalong, as they are sure to bring the party.

🎺 Energetic 9-piece band The Brass Monkeys (pictured above) have been touring for a decade, so they are tight, ever-exciting and fly off in different musical directions due to their collective eclectic tastes. Find them at Jamboree in King’s Cross tonight, Fri 27th Sept.

✡️ Immerse yourself in the traditional songs from the Mizrahi and Sephardi Jewish diasporas, as Voices That Wander features songs in the Judeo-Spanish language of Ladino, There’s a chance to learn about rich cultural traditions and experiences of the peoples with a panel discussion on the night too. At JW3 on Tuesday 1st October.

🎸 Seatle's long-standing rockers Mudhoney are back in town with a big show at Camden Town’s iconic Electric Ballroom this Wednesday 2nd October.

STAGE

What to go see, laugh and cry at this week

🍒 Cherry Sour and the Tragedy of the Pink Flamingo is a tale of love, music and abandonment, as we discover why a singer seems to have killed her glam rockstar former boyfriend. It’s on Saturday October 5th at Etcetera Theatre.

👁️ Tonight at 7.30pm and a matinee tomorrow, Sat 28th you can catch Scene & Heard, a unique production of joyful, captivating new theatre as the words of local young people from Somers Town words are performed by professional actors at Theatro Technis.

🔔 Downstairs at Hampstead Theatre you’ll find the comic and deeply moving debut play from Daisy Hall, which was a finalist for the Woman’s Prize for Playwriting 2024 and is coming hot on the heels of an Edinburgh run. Bellringers is set on a stormy night as two friends are given the dangerous task of dissipating lightening by ringing the church bells, but their faith is faltering. Opens tonight and runs until 2nd Nov.

🎤 Slip behind the revolving bookcase at the Star of Kings this Sunday, for an afternoon of standup at G & B Comedy. They promise nothing less than uproarious entertainment, all brought to you by their incomparable host, Kyle Wallace.

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