Signed by Georgia

Situated less than 200 meters of each other, the World´s End and Octovia Foundation shop despite them being worlds apart share the same location and price points. It is these similar attributes that give me cause to also delve into their history, and clientele. Whereas the unique pieces you see at World´s End are hand picked by Vivienne Westwood whose archive pieces are an antidote to the transient nature of trends, the items in Octavia Foundation are charity donations selected by volunteer staff.

World´s End epitomises Vivienne Westwood´s ethos that fashion is ‘Timeless, Recycling and the Best Price´ the very same idea that is applied to many charity shops such as the likes of the Octavia Foundation.

World´s End and Octavia Foundation are both on the King´s Road in Chelsea, where the likes of fashionistas Mary Quant and Vivienne Westwood frequented in the 60´s.

World´s End is a tiny crooked looking shop with a grey and blue exterior that stands out on the high street haven. The shop could be quite unassuming if it weren’t for the huge clock on the front, with the hands going backwards- time almost stands still in Worlds End. Climb up the crooked steps, ring the bell, “no riff raff please” and enter through the crooked door. The slanted floor was Vivienne´s design for the shop to mimic a ship and the galleon design came about with the Pirate collection, influenced by pirates of the high seas.

The Octavia Foundation shop is situated slightly higher up the Kings Road. It can be easily missed if walking past, located opposite the popular Blue Bird Restaurant and has lots of passing trade.

Westwood’s shops ethos applies to Octavia Foundation in terms of pricing the clothes. Worlds End has a wide range of pricing but tries to keep prices away from high fashion prices. The shop was created with wastefulness in mind. The collection makes use of leftover fabrics, toiles, samples, show jeweller from previous seasons to minimize the squandering of the earth’s resources.

As such, quantities are produced based on what length of fabric is left. Garments are therefore produced in limited runs and some are unique. Fabrics combined in one garment are carefully chosen by Vivienne to complement each other and are used until they run out. This makes each piece a limited edition. The great thing is as it is not a seasons aware collection, there is no need to cost in those month of development work cutting out an extra mark up price. The prices of the collection have been kept as low as possible in order for it to be affordable to as many people as possible. Vivienne especially wants young people to be able to afford pieces from this line so they can wear her designs even if they can’t afford pieces from her main line. Vivienne´s beliefs lie with Buy less – Choose well – make it last.´

The Octavia Foundation founds itself on wastefulness as it makes use for unwanted clothes, accessories, furniture, crockery, books and jewellery. This like Vivienne Westwood´s want to minimize the squandering of the earth’s resources, is exactly what the Octavia Foundation is achieving. Making use of leftovers and creating timeless pieces that people buy at a cheaper price. This surely makes everything in the store quite unique in it’s own right. The prices are also not high simply because it is all second hand. However, there is the odd item in the store that can sometimes be sold at a cheaper price! Especially when the shop manager or assistant doesn’t know what the label is! Therefore, I think the two shops are similar when it comes to their beliefs about recycling garments and keeping the costs down.

Vivienne’s relationship between the 430 Kings Road has long been established for more that 40 years now. It all started with the name Let it Rock from her previous boyfriend Malcolm Maclaren, the name continued to change and finally stuck with the name Worlds End in 1981 after her first Iconic pirate collection and after her split with MacLaren. It is certainly an important place in the History of British fashion since the 1970s. It quickly became a crucible for her political and cultural ideas. Her aim to give advice to the young who she believed to be ‘dangerously short of culture; trained up as consumers and not thinking’.

The Octavia Foundation was founded in 2006 and works to support individuals and communities in west and central London. In 2007, they purchased 20 charity shops from the Notting Hill Housing Association. The shops were rebranded as Octavia Foundation shops but retained the deep red tone synonymous with the NHHA shops.

The Octavia Foundation is a registered, independent charity so all of the money raised goes to support our local community projects and activities with people in west and central London. They run youth clubs and arts/heritage projects, fund lunch clubs for older people, run a befriending programme, offer employment and training projects, advise on money and debt and lots and lots of other things to help to empower local people and to strengthen communities.

Both stores have very committed and regular clientele. However, there customer is very different. Both clients tend to be looking for something great and classic but at a slightly cheaper price. So they have that in common. However, the type of person is certainly different. Due to the Kings Road now being less punk and more prep, less Agnes dean and more Pippa Middleton, the customers who live near by tend to pick the charity shop rather than the Westwood shop. However, the Agness Dean still travels to the Westwood store and when she comes she certainly stands out on the preppy posh kings road.

Japanese Comic – Nana

The main following the store has is Japanese. Many travel to London to visit the WE. Vivienne Westwood designs have been popular in Japan for many years. Her early designs are the essence of Punk. The famous Japanese comic Nana’s has also aided to Vivienne Westwood huge Japanese following as the characters in the comic are often head to toe dressed in Westwood. The shop also has a huge northern England following. The people who live in the area tend to pop in for gifts and small classic Westwood pieces with the brand name, rather than the classic pieces wanted by the die hard cult followers such as the Japanese and northern England.

The location obviously has an effect on what type of person shops at both the Worlds End shop and at the Octavia Foundation. The Octavia Foundation is very well suited for the area with many women from the Kings road regularly shopping there.

The Octavia Foundation customer base is diverse. There are lots of regular customers who live locally, others that are real charity shop fanatics, who travel from far and wide to visit charity shops in the area and more transient customers who might just happen to be passing. Given the area they have lots of customers that are international residents in the area for the short term or tourists to London.

The Octavia Foundations donors and supporters are just as important as their customers as they rely on high quality donations for the shop (to sit alongside their brand new, traded goods) and again, the profile of their donors varies. They have regular donors who choose to support the foundations work particularly, others who donate to them because they are a local charity shop and it’s convenient to drop items to them and they also run particular appeals or donation events to solicit donations from other areas. Since the Ocatavia Foundation have 20 shops across London they also move stock around a lot to maximise the price that they can achieve – for example if a designer item was donated to a shop in Tooting, or Sheen, they would transfer it to one of our central London shops, such as the Kings Road, because it would be able to achieve a better price.

To conclude both shops certainly have clothes that are timeless, recycled and are sold at the best prices possible. They both take a fresh approach as much as possible even though they do not stick to the constraints of following trends and are not bound to continuously develop or sell new styles. Both stores never go on sale, as they do not belong to a particular season. Though their clientele are different types of people, they are looking for something that is recycled and at a best price. So someone who shops at World’s End would certainly shop at charity shops. What’s more, although their histories are worlds apart, they were both set up with strong cultural beliefs and both pride themselves on helping Britain. Both shops help the Britain on a whole. The World’s End label clothes are made in England, at the London studio in Battersea. As the clothes are produced solely in this country, World´s end evidently play a large part in supporting our British economy and its market whereas the Octavia Foundation helps to educate and support British society.