Camden New Journal - News: It’s goodnight to Rough Sleepers as charity shop is closed

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Camden New Journal - by SIMON WROE
Published: 14 February 2008

The smart interior of Rough Sleepers fashion store

It’s goodnight to Rough Sleepers as charity shop is closed

IT opened with great fanfare less than a year ago, but this week the fashion-meets-charity shop Rough Sleepers will close its doors in Chalk Farm for good.
Some of the fashion world’s brightest new stars including Dexter Wong, Stephan Schneider, and Sylvia Rielle backed the haute-couture boutique “with a conscience” when it opened in Camden High Street last February. But despite catwalk endorsements, networking trips to Paris Fashion Week and a store designed by Japanese artist Sonoko Obuchi to look like a giant shopping trolley, this week the shop’s owners, the Novas charity group, admitted poor sales had stripped the finely-tailored shirt from the shop’s back.
A Novas spokesman said: “It was just not the right location.
“It was quite out of the way and the clothes didn’t really sell. It would have needed more time to work.”
Novas said Rough Sleepers will now become a label for “eco-street wear” and a training initiative and will move online.
A café is being planned for the site.
The man behind Rough Sleepers, Paul Everitt, said the store had always been seen as “experimental”.
And he defended company trips abroad.
“If you’re going to do fashion you can’t ignore what’s going on,” said Mr Everitt.
“You’ve got to keep your eye on that and get a feel for what’s going to be exciting. Paris Fashion Week is a working environment. A cattlemarket. We had to persuade the (designers) of the nobility behind the cause. The fashion world is quite hard – if they don’t like the image of your shop then they won’t sell to you.”
The shop, which gave all profits to the homeless, was criticised for its high prices and a shortage of stock produced by those actually living on the streets.

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