Shop Small Special: Labour and Wait
Timeless designs having a contemporary moment, London’s Labour and Wait will make you think differently about your dish brush.
What is it: This store makes buckets look good. A corner shop that combines the hardware with the artisan in a former pub (see the distinctive green tile of Truman Brewery) in Shoreditch and offers functional products for everyday life. Also now has an outpost in Tokyo.
What you need to know: Founded in 2000 by two designers, Rachel Wythe-Moran and Simon Watkins, frustrated by the endless cycles of fashion, Labour and Wait is based on their philosophy that good design should last. Their independent store is full of products that have stood the test of time – both in terms of the legacy behind them (products include blankets produced by the last remaining woolen mill in Wales) and in terms of how long they last when we get them back home (whether that be a dish brush or bottle opener). Think functional classics like Cornishware Mugs and essential hardware needs like an indoor brush that support traditional manufacturing and resist our current throwaway culture. Though very covetable, ironically Labour and Wait takes away the pressure to consume more. Rather it’s founded on durable and functional objects having their place in everyday life.
Why we think it's special: Apart from resisting our tendency to buy plastic and buy cheap with little concern for the person behind the making – the average person in North America and Western Europe consumes 100 kilograms of plastic each year — Labour and Wait is very much an ‘in-person’ store, human interactions are key to this bricks and mortar. On Black Friday instead of leading with product discounts and special offers, Labour and Wait donated 10% of sales to Crisis at Christmas which helps homeless people in the UK.
In their own words: “We believe in a simple, honest approach to design, where quality and utility are intrinsic. From hardware to clothing we offer a selection of timeless products that celebrate functional design and which are appropriate in a traditional or contemporary environment.”
In our gift edit: Carbon neutral enamelware from Riess of Austria, a recycled coffee cup made from discarded coffee grounds, a Scottish woolen blanket made from surplus yarns (it's cold out there, sometimes emotionally), and Labour and Wait’s signature apron.
In need of more Holiday inspiration? We’re a little in love with their shops of yesterday within their own shop: like a Haberdashery, Chemist and Stationer.
Something to inspire: We get stuck on toothbrushes. Or toilet brushes. The small things around our house that we somehow forget to buy sustainably. We fall very quickly into the plastic hole with these. Try to identify something in your house that you have a kneejerk anti-environment position on (there’s something, believe us) and just focus on getting that one thing more human-friendly (whether that’s how and where it’s made, how its production affects the planet and who the person is behind the product). Small steps. Later you can commit to a plastic-free lifestyle (no, we’re not there yet either).
teamLab Planets
There are the obvious jokes one can make about the plethora of experiential pop-up museums that have emerged in our new Instagram-able world, but perhaps there is a kind of beauty that would not have been dreamed nor experienced had social media not been invented.
“teamLab Planets is a museum where you move through water. It consists of 4 vast exhibition spaces at its center, and 7 works of art. The artworks are based on art collective teamLab’s concept of “Body Immersive”.
The massive Body Immersive space consists of a collection of installations in which the entire body becomes immersed in the art, and the boundaries between the viewer and the work become ambiguous.
Visitors enter the museum barefoot, and become immersed with other visitors in the vast installation spaces.”
I know there are the obvious jokes one can make about the plethora of experiential pop-up museums that have emerged in our new Instagram-able world, but today’s visit to *Planets* had me re-thinking my own cynicism.
Perhaps there is a rare beauty in these new creations that we ought to be grateful for, a kind of beauty that would not have been dreamed nor experienced had social media not been invented. I have only ever gone to these *museums* because I know it’s an hour my kids will thank me for. But today’s visit turned out to be something entirely different for me.
Unlike the highly commercial, soulless stateside pop-ups, this museum experience was wildly sensual, surprisingly dreamy and inevitably personal. Over and over again I kept asking myself, “Is this what the approach to heaven feels like?” I kept thinking of my father in his last days weeping, “If I’d known dying was such a beautiful experience, I wouldn’t have spent my entire life fearing it.” I know this is some heavy feelings-stuff for this venue, but really - it was beautiful and powerful.
Head to their website, turn-up the volume and walk with us through an Olympic sized pool of warm, milky water with calming projections of cherry blossoms and koi fish. The music was absolutely everything.
In the end, we lay on a floor for an eternity, observing the vibrant visions of petals falling and butterflies ascending, and the whole time I kept thinking: “Yes. This is exactly what heaven will be like.”