LN-CC reopens London store after four years

As the shake-out in the UK luxury sector — both in-store and online — continues, there’s finally some good news as a concept store that closed in March 2020 due to Covid is finally reopening.

The reborn LN-CC one-of-a-kind store on Shacklewell Lane, East London, debuts on 23 March with a completely new design as it faces up to a very different market to the one it exited four years ago.

The company has continued selling its lively mix of designer labels online in recent years and we’re told its ‘new’ physical space will be “a nexus of creativity and cool, while the online platforms amplify its creative output to its devotional following of younger fans from around the world”.

The space will house the retailer’s “unique curation of luxury fashion and streetwear, alongside the best emerging talent and sustainable innovators as well as music, home and lifestyle”.

Designed by British set designer Gary Card (who first collaborated on the space in 2010), it aims to “celebrate its edit through visual storytelling”.

Its previously popular club space has evolved into L8TE, a dedicated space available for brand launches, key activations and takeovers.

And while it will welcome walk-in visitors, its founding concept as an appointment-only business is also part of the new set-up with appointments via its new personal shopping service extending its services to customers “looking for a more private and personalised shopping journey”.

The aim is to offer the customer “a journey they will not find elsewhere”.

The company endured an administration filing in 2014, after which its founders exited, but its comeback was temporarily stalled by the onset of the pandemic. Yet LN-CC said it “has had considerable success in recent years in building a solid business around the authenticity and integrity of the brand, finding the balance between the genuine, creative instinct of product buy with the analytical attention of rigorous business management”. 

CEO Cristian Musardo, who took over post-administration, said: “LN-CC sets itself apart from other luxury retailers by offering a unique, highly curated assortment mixing the most innovative and risk-taking products from world-renowned brands while unearthing new ones. Not afraid of mixing high and low, the underground and the mainstream, the past and the future of fashion. This space exemplifies that. We are doubling down on being a platform for global brands looking for a true partner offering a distinctive retail environment, while acting as a differentiated communication platform to create, produce and amplify brand and product stories.”

So what have the company and Gary Card come up with? Card “sought to take small cues from the original while innovating with a refreshed lens exploring the interplay between texture, colour and materials within the newly imagined rooms”.

The previous LN-CC tunnel has been brought above ground for the first time “juxtaposed against lilacs in the main fashion room Callisto, where forms intersect to spotlight and celebrate collections”. 

Each room “hosts and represents a different part of LN-CC’s offering”. 

And as mentioned, L8TE is the evolution of the club area, “now a multipurpose space, fitted with removable fixtures and a fully customisable lighting system built into the walls, creating a high-shine iridescent skin that transforms on demand” for any events.

The product offer continues the business’s focus on luxury fashion and streetwear along with plenty of emerging labels but with a definite emphasis on a curated edit. Brands there will include Bottega Veneta, Prada, Moncler, Margiela, The Row, and Rick Owens, alongside with exclusives products from Our Legacy, Isa Boulder, Too Hot Vintage, myco and Antenne Books. 

The store’s official sound partner is Teenage Engineering who have built a one of a kind audio system for the space.