‘The fashion gods have been good to us’: Steven Bethell, founder of Beyond Retro
‘There’s nothing wrong with a man-brooch,” says Steven Bethell, the co-founder of the vintage clothing empire Beyond Retro, pointing to the 19th-century accessory fixed to his breast pocket. It’s in the shape of a beetle with golden legs poking out from its gem-encrusted body, a big trend in Victorian Britain. “I feel incomplete if I’m not wearing a brooch,” he sayswhen we meet at a coffee shop close to the newest Beyond Retro in Coal Drops Yard in King’s Cross, in the heart of London.
With 15 shops in London, Brighton, Bristol and Sweden, plus the first Finnish branch opening this month, Beyond Retro was flying the secondhand flag long before sustainability became a buzzword. Still, 20 years after Bethell and his wife, Helene Carter-Bethell, opened the firstshop on Cheshire Street, just off Brick Lane in Shoreditch, east London, it remains the blueprint for affordable, beautifully curated secondhand clothing. Bethell says the average price point for, say, a faux-fur coat or 60s shift dress is still about £20.
As a teenager, I would spend weekends there, rifling through piles of high-waisted jeans, peep-toe shoes, cat’s-eye sunglasses and endless tea dresses in the hope of picking up a secondhand gem on a Saturday-job budget. I still have an oversized green woollen cardigan and a high-waisted red suede miniskirt bought in that era, both still wearable thanks to the enduring quality of so much vintage stock.
There were other vintage stores – Rokit, Absolute Vintage, etc – but Beyond Retro’s canary yellow (recycled) plastic bags branded with its tattoo-inspired anchor logo – now swapped for brown paper versions, of course – had a certain cachet. My generation’s indie idols, such as Carl Barât and Alexa Chung, were said to
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