Store gallery: Urban Outfitters opens latest UK store in Camden

Time was when the opening of a store from US-based fashion and homewares retailer Urban Outfitters was something of an event, in the UK at least.

Nowadays the opening of an Urban Outfitters store in the capital feels like a much less rare occurrence, with each new shop opening coming hot on the heels of the last.

Or at least that’s the way it seems if you happen to be a frequent visitor to central London. Appearances are deceptive however. This is in fact a retailer that tends to open large stores in major cities and so far this year there have been just two new shops to add to those already up and running in the centre of the capital. The first was in Park House, at the west end of Oxford Street. That opened on February 1 and involved taking a new-build structure and reconfiguring it almost entirely internally before giving it the beat-up Urban Outfitters treatment.

Six months on and the second store in London this year has now opened, in Camden. This one is almost totally the reverse of the Park House branch as it is the conversion of an old building, which meant working with the existing structure to create something new.

Cinema conversion

Located more or less opposite Camden tube station, this store sits on the site of an old cinema, The Plaza, which had been around since 1937, prior to closing in the mid 1990s owing to rent rises. In recent years it has done time as an indoor market, but this too ceased at the turn of the decade.

Now it is a fashion store and the shopper would be hard pressed to work out the building’s former avatars unless a careful examination of the floor was made. The store features a long narrow ingress, which formerly served as the ticket office-cum-entrance hall. And just inside the front door, following the careful removal of a covering layer, there is a mosaic pattern bearing the word “Plaza”, which reveals the store’s original purpose.

Beyond this, in what was the cinema auditorium, there are traces of the lines that were used to demarcate the market traders’ pitches.

That, however, is it, and what Urban Outfitters has done is to take a small piece of 20th century cinema architecture and make it its own. It has form in this area - having converted a cinema in Stockholm in 2006. That project came at a price and Urban’s then managing director for the UK and Europe, Martin Parker, commented at the time: “We won’t be doing any more like this.”

Return to form

More than half a decade on and the Camden store looks, on first examination, a lot more like the kind of thing that is affordable in terms of containing price and build cost while creating something that will have genuine appeal to local shoppers.

And a word or two about the local shoppers. The majority of those who arrive in this part of north London do so in order to take a quick scoot around the adjacent markets and vintage clothing stores and a lot of them are tourists.

From the outside Urban Outfitters fits the locality seamlessly, indeed it looks as if it has been there for a while. A few minutes before the off on opening day, however, an officially sanctioned graffiti artist was busy spraying the shutter - adding the finishing touch to a store that would blend into the local vista.

When the shutter was raised, the long, narrow hall where the ticket office had been was with a mix of impulse purchases and clothing. The former took the shape of vinyl records and small gifts, while the latter, on mid-shop tables and along the perimeter, was predominantly concerned with logoed T-shirts and related merchandise.

The walls had been stripped back to the brickwork and the ceiling void had been exposed with cable trays doubling up as lighting gantries. The floor was covered in reclaimed wood, organised in a herringbone pattern.

Steve Briars, creative director for Urban Outfitters Europe, says that much of what has been done in Camden represents a return to what the retailer has been known for after it had a period of mild “Disneyfication” of new store interiors. Practically, this means respect for a building and making use of its key features and working with them.

This is apparent from the moment the shopper enters the main atrium where the high ceiling and stripped-back brick walls have been used to create an interior that feels rough and ready in a streetwear Camden manner.

At the end closest to the store entrance, a massive cartoon-style graphic of conjoined men and women occupies almost the entire wall. It has been painted directly onto the brick and the small, round window above allows sufficient natural daylight to penetrate the area to make this a must-see feature.

Turning round from this, the shopper will see another graphic that dominates the wall at the other end of the shop and between these two extremes the floor and the displays look almost chaotic. Yet there is order about the way that things are organised and seeing your way through the space is straightforward because nothing rises too high.

Gallery and market

There is also the matter of the lighting. As it stands, if the shopfitting, graphics and stock were removed, this would be a passable cowshed, complete with industrial pendant lights overhead - such is the sense of space. Any such thoughts are banished by the visual merchandising however, which makes this store feel like a cross between the nearby Camden Market and a trendy art gallery of the kind commonly encountered in this part of London.

Worth noting too are the mid-floor equipment brand signs. These state, for instance, “Urban Outfitters Womenswear: we have Staring at Stars”. In so doing, Urban states that it stocks particular brands, but takes ownership of them, rather than the other way round.

This branch of Urban may be different from others but it really does pass the logo test. If you took the name off the door and were beamed down into this store, there could be little doubt about where you were. This is a positive.

Urban Outfitters has developed a format that isn’t really a format but which is instantly recognisable and attractive at the same moment.

It is also immediately at ease with its location.

Although there are other Urban Outfitters stores that are not particularly distant from this one, it feels separate from its sisters and is likely to attract a more grungy crowd. It should do well and is much better than most of the offer in Camden Market itself. A real addition to the area.