Shopping, Kirstin Innes

Neighbourhood Watch: Shawlands, Glasgow

What’s it like? The unofficial hub of the Southside. Young, bustling and almost completely tenement-bound, packed with pizza places, big bars and some excellent independent shopping, Shawlands also benefits from proximity to the lovely space of Queen’s…

Neighbourhood Watch: Partick, Glasgow

A guide to your local neighbourhoods

Partick, Glasgow What’s it like? The bit of the salubrious West End that still feels properly Glaswegian: cool café bars, delis and boutiques sitting tooth by rough-shaven jowl with classic boozers, betting shops, greasy spoons and pound…

The rough guide to Portobello, Edinburgh's seaside

Neighbourhood Watch: The best bits by the beach

What’s it like? An utterly charming, slightly wonky area of Edinburgh, characterised by the city’s only beach and a very distinct, anti-corporate local community ethos. Formerly the holiday destination of most Central Belters, a lack of investment in…

Area guide to the Glasgow Film Festival

Kirstin Innes helps you bring the movies to life with our GFF-themed area guide

If you're interested in the Beyond Bollywood, Superheroes in Glasgow, Ceol's Craic or Fashion in Film strands, this is the Glasgow guide for you.

Shopping for Form and Function with The Gin Palace collective and GOOD-D

Ahead of Glasgow International, two neighbouring pop-up exhibitions appeared in the city to explore the links between art and commercial design. Kirstin Innes went rooting about in them... Over the weekend of Friday 9 to Sunday 11 April, two pop-up…

Why there's life in the book trade yet

Reading and righting

Between the bankruptcy of Borders before Christmas and the oncoming onslaught of cheeky upstarts like the Kindle and the iPad, popular wisdom would have it that things are looking a little gloomy in the world of book selling. It’s certainly a…

Oxfam DIY shop to open in Glasgow

In Glasgow, the Oxfam clothes store at 231 Byres Road (just opposite Hillhead Underground Station) is undergoing something of a major makeover. In order to complement the Byres Road Oxfam book and record stores, as well as compete with the increasingly…

Big Man Tea brings quality brew to Glasgow

Hoi. Big man. Like specialised Japanese tea? Like Glasgow? Then boy, have we got the right product for you. We’re always suckers for a quirky, locally run wee business, and Big Man Tea, producing fine Japanese teas (white, green, black and blue, of all…

Louise Gray, Holly Fulton and Jonathan Saunders in new ASOS collaboration

Thanks to local fashion experts The Coveted Mag (whoworewhatwhen.typepad.co.uk) for alerting us to a new ASOS collaboration with some of our favourite emergent Scottish designers. The designs are, in true ASOS style, cheap, bright and on-trend: we…

Doodles Ceramics marks tenth birthday with some cracking offers

Finally, Edinburgh make-your-own-pottery institution Doodles Ceramics has turned ten this year, and they’re celebrating with a bargain-barmy load of offers. As well as specialised half-term workshops (running until Fri 19 Feb) and activities around…

2010 preview: Fashion

Fashion, with its strictly observed seasons marked by the various equinoxes of London/New York/Paris/Milan Fashion Weeks, is a cyclical beast. It likes to understand a decade as a fixed unit of time with a distinctive identity, defined sharply against…

Why independent shopping is cheaper than the high street

Small, local independent shops are just as keen to reward regular customers for loyalty as their big-corp bretheren, and none of the offers below will leave you with the anticlimax of realising your three years’ worth of Boots points only entitle you to…

News from the shop front - January 2010

We usually concentrate on independent shops here at List Towers, but we’re genuinely saddened to hear that Borders UK are going into administration. The Glasgow store in particular has been a real gem, with a dedicated and knowledgeable staff always…

Popping to the shops

Who needs permanent premises? Shopping Editor Kirstin Innes profiles the newest trends in pop-up boutiques

Undercover shopping in Edinburgh

Last fortnight we did a round up of the unusual quirky markets springing up in Glasgow to make this heady season of consumerism that little bit more bearable. Now Edinburgh’s getting its shopping quirk on, starting off with the return of an old…

Charity Couture

While many charity shops take orders from centralised offices, meaning that all the clothes that come in have to be colour-coded or prescriptively arranged, Edinburgh’s five St Columba’s Hospices have always had a bit of individual spirit. ‘I work in…

Down under - Glasgow's South Side

The West End might shout louder and jangle its designer bracelets more ostentatiously, but for its many residents, the gigantic, sprawling mass of the South Side is the true heart of Glasgow. As many local historians and geographers have observed…

Glasgow School of Art - Masters in Fashion Promenade

Woolly thinking

Over the years, Glasgow School of Art’s prestigious Masters in Textiles as Fashion has produced some properly pioneering designers: from internationally-recognised names like Jonathan Saunders and Pam Hogg to The List’s current favourites, upcoming…

Craft Mafia

Craft. It’s in. You’re thinking of knitting, aren’t you? Tea-stained doilies at bric-a-brac stalls, maybe? Or drippy hippy macramé at earnest rallies. Wrong. Very very wrong. As these pictures show, somewhere along the way, craft got hip and a little…

Cupcakes

As anyone with embarrassing Millenium-era photographs of themselves wearing an ugly corsage the size of their head will testify, Sex and the City launched a lot of strange trends. None, however, is as persistent as the cupcake. The scene in which Carrie…

Independent Shopping guide: Introduction

In a recession, small businesses are usually hit worst. Shopping Editor Kirstin Innes channels the spirit of the Blitz as she launches our campaign to support local, independent shops

Glasgow - The West End

Independent Shopping Guide

Glasgow - The West End Leafy, artistically inclined, fashionable, but not in a corporate way, dear me no, the West End is one of the most beautiful – and thoroughly self–contained – areas of Glasgow. It is fed into by the students of the nearby…

Edinburgh - Old Town

Independent Shopping Guide

Independent shops in the capital’s historic centre, presided over by Edinburgh Castle, take their aesthetic responsibilities seriously. That’s not to say that they’re all authentically restored and historically preserved properties frozen in time, nor…

Glasgow & Edinburgh - Honourable Mentions

Independent Shopping Guide

In Glasgow’s city centre, Sauchiehall Street, Argyle Street, the Buchanan Galleries and St Enoch Centre are mostly stuffed with high street chains, but we don’t want to overlook the number of excellent record shops in the area: Classics in the City and…

Vintage Clothes Customisation: Sew much better

Over the last decade or so, as we’re sure you’re aware, it’s become not only socially acceptable, but positively necessary, darling, to wear second hand clothes. The vintage business is big – entire empires are built upon a few 50s prom frocks and some…