Last week I popped into Beak Street’s recently opened GANT Rugger store, the first stand-alone Rugger store to debut in the UK. Although worn by the likes of Ryan Reynolds state-side, the GANT brand for us Britons is often associated with chinos and cashmere jumpers worn on Sunday afternoons by an older, discerning male audience. But not Rugger. Rugger is a brand in it’s own right quite separate from it’s GANT forefather. With New England attitude and Ivy league swagger, Rugger is reinventing the vintage, preppy look for a young and style-sensitive male hipster.
Housed in an ex-fishmongers a mere stone’s throw away from one of Soho’s most popular eateries Polpo, the Rugger store is relatively bare on arrival, designed to be an exhibition area giving you a sneak preview into this season’s Team Americano campaign. It is rare to walk into a store and be met by an expert rather than a shop assistant, but the Rugger staff have a passion for the brand and know its heritage (a word you’ll here a lot around here) inside out. Serving me up a cold beer from the store’s SMEG fridge, I was free to explore the collection and flick through the store’s impressive library of journals and style bibles. The back of the store is all exposed tiles and wooden furnishing, and it is here you get a real feel for what Christopher Bastin is trying to portray – this is his informal invite for you to join his NYC collective of bloggers, photographers, part-time writers come full-time adventurers, and playboys (of course), and my RSVP is yes, hell why not?
Girls who like menswear, the item to keep your eye on when you swing by is the Varsity Sherpa. More for the minted than skinted this is the varsity jacket to covet this season, and here is Lina Thoefelt sporting it as part of the Rugger Relay campaign.
Lina Thoefelt in the Rugger Relay
more at www.gant.co.uk/gant-rugger
