The Light House

In 2019, Joe Corré got the keys for a shop on Berwick Street that was rundown even by Soho standards. Previously a workshop and saleroom of a chandelier maker, the four-storey, century-old house was crammed with stuff – mostly brass and wrought iron chandeliers and their parts – and had bits of wood nailed to the ceiling where the beams had fallen in. Seven years later, a great deal of love and hard labour has produced the Light House, a beautifully restored townhouse that now drips with chandeliers in the forms of light fittings, wall sconces, and sculptures – and which aims to illuminate the work of a cluster of designers otherwise forced to stay in the shade.

A fashion house, atelier and members bar, the Light House is primarily a meeting point for designers that are otherwise forced to operate alone and online. For now, this curated list includes Atsuko Kudo, Sian Hoffman, Torture Garden Latex, A Child of The Jago, Natacha Marro, Fleet Ilya, Linnie McLarty and Benedict Lamb, and the transaction is simple: the designer takes a rail, and the Light House takes a 30% commission of sales. While each designer sells ready-to-wear, the atelier allows for a much higher degree of made-to-order, with a suite of rooms on the third floor dedicated to in-person fittings and meetings. The emphasis is on longevity: “Come in and speak face to face with the designer,” as Corré says, “and experience creating a made-to-order garment you’ll afford for the rest of your life rather than sinking money on fast fashion.”

The Light House is a glimmer of reprieve in a landscape that’s incredibly punishing of small designers. Paying rent on commercial property in central London is near impossible for most and, as a result, the number of independent shops is rapidly declining. What’s more, many of the designers of the Light House are creating fetishwear, or clothing that derives its sartorial codes from fetishwear, and any brand working in even vaguely sex-adjacent circles faces the further burden of being barred from advertising online (even organically) – after Instagram and other platforms introduced swingeing restrictions on not only the imagery but the vocabulary of anything vaguely deemed “adult”. 

Much of the sex-positivity available to the under 40s is grimly cheery and, more often than not, brand-affiliated – influencers waving sex toys around on Instagram, colourful illustrations about polyamory. Bring back the sordid streets of Soho, which were always inhabited by a more raucous, less palatable cross-section of society, getting up to more disgraceful things. Under the many lights of the Light House, leather harnesses gleam. The walls are lined with reproductions of erotic Victorian pencil sketches. Essentially, this feels like what Soho should be for: a creaking multifloor townhouse with flecked plaster walls that smells of latex. It’s either that or another Joe and the Juice.