Meet Ben Smith and Alix Gannon proprietors of the very funky clothes/coffee/music/art shop Tapedeck Razorblade.

 

Ben – When I was about 13/14 it was the name of a record label I wanted to start and that’s where it came from. We were going through millions of names for the shop, Peach Fuzz was one Alix’s sister came up with, Future Retro… tiny bit gay. Tapedeck Razorblade is kind of along those lines but not so gay.

 

One of a kind…in the world dot com!

 

It was a beauty salon, nails and waxing and stuff. When we were ripping up the carpet on the stairs we found random toenails. It was gross.

 

 

Ben – I was sitting at B Sharp, the record store, about two years ago and there were all these kids hanging around and basically I thought it would be a cool idea to have a record store / coffee shop. Because everyone wants to hang out at a record store and listen to music. So I went to Alix and she was like, “oh that’s a great idea but I’ve always wanted to do something with clothes.” So I suggested we could do all three.

 

Alix – sourcing clothing labels. Half of our brands, we already knew about through association. I lived in Amsterdam for a couple of years and two of our labels are from Amsterdam. Another one is a friend of my ex-boyfriend in London and we also find new labels through the internet.

Ben – The Internet is a funny one. You get these dudes that don’t speak English as their first language and you write them an email going, “hey, loved the clothes can we hook up the distribution?” and they write back, almost “fuck you, what do you want our shit for?” and we think that we’ve offended them but it’s just because English isn’t their first language and it doesn’t translate well. That was a really funny hurdle.

 

 

Alix – I love Rockwell. I just love his art and his design. We’ve got a few of his sticker packs and things like that. It’s just whacky, the ‘upskirt’ and ‘titty twister’ are just awesome.

 

Ben - I think it’s awesome. We’ll actually be starting our own label and doing exactly that.

Alix - We always wanted to have local artists doing designs for us but now that we’ve got exhibitions upstairs every fortnight we’re trying to find a way to have t-shirts made so that every two weeks when we have exhibitions we can release t-shirts by the same artist. That’s the idea at the moment.