iStyle: Window shopping

Selfridges has turned its store front into a showcase for new design talent. By Stephanie Hirschmiller

A big yellow incubator showcasing new fashion talent – it’s helped launch the careers of Simone Rocha to Maarten van der Horst – the Bright Young Things initiative at Selfridges is now also a platform (2 September to 17 October) for a broader spectrum of emerging creatives from the worlds of gastronomy to design.

Now in its third year, the new intake of 15 UK-based rising stars, has each created their own display in one of Selfridges’ windows – revealed earlier this week.

East London set designer Clementine Keith Roach has created a surreal interpretation of a 1970s office in Los Angeles, complete with potted palm tree, water-cooler, fan, telephone and Venetian blind – surreal because it’s all been fashioned to resemble marble.

She loves creating faux environments and playing with expectations. “I’m interested in experimenting with different materials to create the real formations of natural marble,” she says.

Materials include polystyrene which she carves to look like rock, covers it in jesmonite and hand paints it to finish. Next up for her is an equally surreal shoot with Dazed & Confused magazine, a fashion film in a quarry and the interior design of a London bar.

George Wu and Sarah Malin, the duo who run The Poundshop, a pop-up marketplace for emerging designers to sell their goods at affordable prices (£1-£10), have a window installation made up of colour coordinated pound shop finds from plastic baskets to clothes-airers.

In fact, they now consider themselves experts on every pound shop in London. “It’s amazing to be in Selfridges,” Malin says, “especially as our window is right behind Gucci.”

The BYTs have also all produced merchandise to be sold in the Selfridges Concept Store such as hand-marbled 1990s telephones, tables inlaid with mother of pearl in the case of Keith-Roach, and silk screen building blocks and cool stacking candles from The Poundshop’s 32 contributing designers.

selfridges.co.uk; thepoundshop.org; clementinekeithroach.blogspot.co.uk