1 week Ago By Mahoro Seward
London is a city where the most precious gems are more often than not found in the least assuming of places, a maxim well proven by Twos . Indeed, at first glance, neither of the cult vintage dealer’s East London locations reveal themselves as the fashion devotees’ pilgrimage sites that they are. Passing by its original location – a nondescript gallery space on a stretch of Hackney Road that, until the Japanese pottery shops turned up, was better known for its puzzling bounty of luggage shops – you’d hardly expect to find a hub for the neighbourhood’s many fashionphiles.
On a dreary mid-week November afternoon, however, that’s exactly what it is, with a single file of directional dressers poring over a rail populated with a pleated Comme des Garçons skirt in a hefty grey knit, a super cropped Jean Paul Gaultier bomber from 1989, nylon Andre Walker baguettes and a lurid green jersey sweater by cult Japanese label Hysteric Glamour. If its first location is a non-descript treasure trove, its second location – a hop, step and jump away just off Broadway Market – is an if-you-know-you-know Aladdin’s Cave. It isn’t exactly somewhere you discover on a whim.
Tucked away on the seventh floor of an industrial block housing Deliveroo ghost kitchens and designers’ studios, it takes a light trek to find. Efforts are well rewarded, though, with the airy space stocking an expanded array of the impeccably curated vintage that Twos has earned its reputation for, alongside a burgeoning offering of work by some of London’s most exciting independent designers . Though Twos is now a must-know secret among East London’s booming population of fashion folk and fans, its origin story is a humble one.
“It started about six years ago as a weekend thing in my bedroom,” says Josh Cook, Twos’s owner and founder. At the time, he’d just started a job at a London-based fashion showroom and sales agency, representing Auralee, the Japanese purveyor of understatedly chic garments crafted in exquisite custom-developed fabrics. “I’d just gotten my first salary and wanted to do something with the money.
I’d always been sending my friends links for pieces to buy, so after about six months of collecting stuff at home, I decided to turn my room into a little retail space, and have friends come over and try stuff on over drinks and food.” Word began to spread – though not by Cook’s own intention. “There was zero publicity behind it – it was just my friends initially, and then they’d bring theirs, who’d bring theirs.
..” he recalls.
“It started very slowly. I was working full-time, so I wasn’t doing it for the money. My target margin was about a pint of Guinness on each piece.
” In the wake of the pandemic, Cook decamped from his bedroom and took on a brief, informal summer residency in his local park – “We pretended it was a birthday party so that no one would think we were selling stuff,” he chuckles – before committing to a studio space in Seven Sisters. “There was a really great Colombian restaurant close by, so we’d eat empanadas, drink beer and just hang out,” he beams. “More and more people kept coming.
” What kept them coming was Twos’s expertly defined, high-low curation, spanning everything from rare knits by Comme des Garçons’s umbrella label Tao to Swedish army jumpers, clasp-fastened moto jackets by cult ’90s Italian streetwear brand Energie to faded Ford logo tees. Cook is a self-proclaimed fashion obsessive, with an eye for the fine details that elevate a piece to best-in-class status. “I’m quite wardrobe focused.
I’m much more about dressing, rather than an archivist or a collector in that way. The things that guide my buying are things like construction details, fabric quality and fit,” he says. “I always want to have the most special version of a piece that I want.
” The calibre of the buy aside, Twos’s cult appeal can also be attributed to the sense of enigma around it. There’s no shoppable website , or any significant social-media promotion of what’s in stock: “It’s always changing – we try to price things so there’s a real sense of range. It keeps things moving, and it means that if you want to know what’s here, you have to come by!” In September 2022, Cook decided to commit himself to the project full-time, leaving his sales job and opening Twos’s first permanent location on Hackney Road.
The appetite was immediate, with the store quickly growing from a weekend-only pop-up to a five-days-a-week operation. Earlier this year, Twos broadened its horizons, opening the doors to its larger Broadway Market outlet. The move has allowed Cook to pursue a long-standing dream of branching out into multi-brand retail, stocking the work of a growing selection of independent brands alongside the vintage offering, starting with London-based knitwear designer Cecile Tulkens .
“Over the next year, we’ll be bringing on four to six brands,” Cook shares. While he’s keen to keep mum on the forthcoming launches, he insists that “they’re brands making beautifully made clothes that I adore, really believe in and want to invest in – particularly in such a challenging environment for designers.” More than an expanded product offering, the new space has also allowed Cook to place the community-minded ethos that has defined Twos since the start back at the heart of the project.
His mission is in no small part aided by its off-kilter location. “Even the journey to finding the store takes you out of yourself – it’s not super easy to just pop in. I think I was trying to get back to what the original iterations of Twos had been, which was somewhere people would stay for a long time,” he says, recalling his experiences visiting similarly off-the-grid stores during a year spent in Japan.
“It was the first time I’d seen shopping as a third space. You would go to a shop that was in an office block, or down a long corridor with a tiny door, and you’d end up spending two or three hours meeting other people who’d made the effort to find it, or just chatting with the owner.” So far, Cook has been pretty successful in achieving his goal.
On any given visit to either of Twos’s locations, you’ll discover a motley crew of off-duty models, art students, musicians and more bonding over a mutual love of a waffle-knit Prada sweater or a Maryam Nassir Zadeh dress in fuchsia silk crepe. “My aim is always to make an atmosphere in which people can slow down a little bit, feel a certain feeling and start to involve themselves beyond the commerce of it all – to feel like they’re part of a scene,” Cook says. “We actually get a lot of moments in the shop where people will start talking to someone else who’s there, and then they’re striking up a whole vibe.
” A Twos matchmaking service would be a logical next step, then. “That’s happening!” Cook quips. “We’ve had a fair few people come in looking to be matchmade, so Twos speed dating is on the way.
” Beyond giving the term “fashion lover” a whole new meaning, the move is indicative of his intentions to create a space where shopping is about more than business transactions. “With this new space, we’ll be having lots of fun. Food, drinks, fashion shows.
.. I want it to become a bit more like a youth club.
A fashion youth club, if you will.”.
