Life & Style, Shopping

Lost in Fiction

13 Nov 2008

It’s been eight years since the much-missed John Smith’s bookshop on Byres Road closed its doors and turned into a branch of Starbucks. At the time, many residents of Glasgow’s West End saw it as another, depressing, sign of the times. John Smith’s…

Yo, ho . . . ho?

13 Nov 2008

Yeah, we know. Christmas is the last thing on your mind. The economy is in crisis, you’re worried about your mortgage/rent/job/bank account/pet stockbroker. And it’s November. However, the festive season is looming like a tinsel-bedecked freight train…

The Christmas crunch: Shopping on a budget

13 Nov 2008

The stock market’s in turmoil, the housing market’s throwing a strop and the price of bread is skyrocketing. Not ideal conditions for celebrating our annual festival of excess and gluttony. Don’t worry, though, The List is here to help. Ahead of our…

Tinsel towns: Glasgow and Edinburgh Winter Festivals

13 Nov 2008

Kirstin Innes takes a look at the free activities going on in both cities over the festive season. Ah, remember back when the civic contribution to the festive effort started and ended with a couple of lightbulb angels hanging off the lampposts, and…

Eat, drink and be merry: Christmas food

13 Nov 2008

‘Christmas dinner on a budget is easy, and you don’t have to end up with a can of Spam and a tub of out-of-date potato salad, either. It should be a special meal; it should feel special, and the secret to that is really simple – get a table set…

Have a crafty Christmas: Ethical Christmas shopping

13 Nov 2008

Ethical elf Anna Docherty, visits the one-stop-shop for a guilt-free Christmas. Christmas comes but once a year and so do those niggling feelings of guilt about getting a real tree, not recycling your wrapping paper, or omitting to get charity Christmas…

GSA shop

16 Oct 2008

‘You know the sort of thing. We call it Mackintrash, or Mockintosh.’ Cathy Randall is laughing as she tries to diplomatically describe the kind of thing she definitely doesn’t want in the newly opened Glasgow School of Art shop. Shoppers will just have…

GOODD

Goodd intentions

21 Aug 2008

‘Well, I think even just in order to keep our own interest intact, we needed to do something more than a retail outlet.’ Brian Proudfoot is talking me through the philosophy behind his new Glasgow venture GOODD, which he co-runs with fellow interior…

Watermelon

14 Aug 2008

Scuttling through Glasgow’s West End to meet Gavin O’Brien, owner of the recently refurbished vintage institution Watermelon, I wonder, what on earth am I looking for? Past experience of fusty second-hand hovels hadn’t prepared me for Watermelon’s new…

Pageant

3 Jul 2008

Summer 2008 A shop. Why ever not? Inspired by trips to Berlin, London and even Glasgow, my friend Anna Stride and very-soon-to-be friend Claire Anderson suggest that we collectively open a menswear boutique in Edinburgh. Despite my retail experience…

Eco-friendly festival shopping

5 Jun 2008

Never mind Kasabian at Connect or Shaky at Glasto, the real headliner at this year’s festivals is the environment, stupid. The ecological impact of 80,000-odd people producing a huge amount of concentrated waste is immense but festivals are offsetting…

Made in the Shade @ The Lighthouse

22 May 2008

She wears a frilly apron and teases her hair into a rock-hard bee-hive. She spends her days baking fresh cupcakes and her nights stitching patchwork quilts. According to Carrie Maclennan, she’s ‘the American 1950s housewife mother you never had’, and…

Summer trends

8 May 2008

Blame Status Quo. Blame grunge. Above all, blame Christopher Kane’s continuing fascination with the clothes his babysitters wore circa 1989. But how will a summer full of bleached denim and ra-ra ruffles work on our streets? We ask the experts. . .

Budget Star Fashion

24 Apr 2008

To hell in a handbag Let’s start with handbags. Celebrities are always snapped clutching the season’s most covetable, whether D&G’s Lily bag or a classic tote by Louis Vuitton. Fortunately, hiring a designer bag is the newest way of saying you’ve got…

Hairdressers

10 Apr 2008

Family of hair Claire Fleming set up Claire Frances in Glasgow in 1997 ‘We’re a family business – our mother has been in the industry for over 40 years, and that’s a lot of hair cuts! I’ve been doing this for 20 years now and I really love my job…

Grassmarket shoppers to get free parking

3 Apr 2008

Yes, it might be covered in scaffolding with a better view of a builder’s backside than the castle, but the traders operating out of Edinburgh’s Grassmarket are anxious to assure their customers that it’s business as usual throughout April and…

Old-fashioned sweetie shops

27 Mar 2008

Ever since Topshop’s flagship store in London’s Oxford Circus introduced a pick’n’mix crammed full of sugary treats designed to top up the sugar levers of over-excited teenagers, all the cool kids have known you’re not anyone unless you have a…

Shopping in London

13 Mar 2008

Something cool For a one-stop shop of new designers Sunday Upmarket (Liverpool Street, sundayupmarket.co.uk ) has 140 stalls of accessories, fashion and interiors. Keep an eye out for Maria Helena Spector’s jewellery made from silver, lava and…

Shopping Showdown - Edinburgh

The Style Issue

13 Mar 2008

Capital trends Diana Kiernander considers the mix of the traditional and cutting edge that inspires Edinburgh’s dedicated followers of fashion Edinburgh style should be easy to define. There’s an air of near-perfect designer minimalism among the…

Shopping Showdown - Glasgow

The Style Issue

13 Mar 2008

Glasgow styles better Kirstin Innes and Sharon Stephen report on the heavily accessorised cheap chic trend-setting of the West Coast Despite the manicured, designer labelled image promoted by the city marketing bureau under the umbrella Glasgow…

Shopping trips

13 Mar 2008

Blow the budget For every traveller who sees haggling as an integral part of any good holiday there are many more who would happily swaddle their first born in giftwrap and hand them to the next passer-by if it meant they never had to play the…

The Style Issue - Music style

13 Mar 2008

With many high street retailers currently stocking just about every item of attire an aspiring indie hipster could dream of – from neon-splattered hoodies to trousers crotch-wrenchingly tight enough to do more for family planning than an entire social…

The Style Issue - Trendspotting

13 Mar 2008

Dieny Itoe Clothes Not yet out of college, 23-year-old model and design student Dieny Itoe is hotly tipped for fashion fame. Her sophisticated interpretation of form and fabric earned her the coveted Glasgow 1999 Design Medal last year, and while…

Whoever said money can't buy happiness...

12 Mar 2008

Not for nothing did a wise woman once surmise: "Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to shop." Retail therapy: that ultimate rush when the seemingly unobtainable becomes a bona fide reality. Whatever you want, the Amex…

Pamper perfect

15 Nov 2007

Once, your cut and blow dry experience amounted to a cup of coffee and a flick through the latest fashion glossy. But hairdressing has come a long way with today’s super salons offering a brilliant, modern and elegant array of luxury services. A…

Secondhand record shops in Glasgow and Edinburgh

1 Nov 2007

Shopping and I have always had a love-hate relationship. But we put aside our differences for record shopping: that ritualistic, solitary activity that’s at once sombre yet exhilarating. Secondhand records possess the same mystique as old books; they…

Shop - Tam Shepherd’s Trick Shop

18 Oct 2007

I’ve picked the worst possible time of the year to interview Julia Walton. It’s 12.30 on a Sunday afternoon, just before Hallowe’en, and the door of Tam Shepherd’s Trick Shop is constantly jingling. ‘Yes, it’s definitely our busiest time,’ she says…

Vintage clothes in Glasgow and Edinburgh

20 Sep 2007

Throwing out old clothes can be an emotional task and parting with that ripped pair of jeans you wore every day when you were 19 can be hard, but with a little imagination and some creative stitching, rips, tears and pinching waistlines need no longer…

Shop - Bolshie

16 Aug 2007

Ethical fashion may be being shouted about all over the internet, but Bolshie, Glasgow’s only clothes shop dedicated to ethical, Fairtrade, organic and recycled clothing, is tucked away on a leafy residential street near Glasgow University. It looks a…

It's playtime

Children's Clothing

1 Aug 2007

Ethical, stylish, alternative, interesting and educational? Kirstin Innes meets the designers behind the saintliest children’s clothing companies in the country

Life & Style - Shop

22 May 2007

That tired old maxim that nobody queues like the British has had a new lease of life this month, with a nasty rash of ‘event shopping’ getting consumers and commentators itchy. They included the launch of Kate Moss’s collection for Topshop and Anya…

Shop - A Sale in Two Cities

Life & Style

27 Mar 2007

Krista Blake and Fleur Macintosh haven’t met. Maybe they should have. Macintosh took over tiny Edinburgh vintage clothing store Godiva as a 23-year-old graduate, and, five years and a change of venue later, it is one of the most original clothing…