Wealden Times | WT186 | August 2017 | Wedding supplement inside

Previous pages & above: In the main room, the theme of
white walls and vintage items in bright and pretty colours
creates a space that is both intriguing and tranquil
Anyone with an interest in where the next
cool place in the constant progress of urban
regeneration/gentrification will be might
want to get a satellite fix on Helen Robinson.
In the late 1970s she opened her first shop, for her
fashion label PX – which was to the New Romantics
what Vivienne Westwood’s Seditionaries was to punk
rock style – in James Street, Covent Garden. This was
after Eliza Doolittle’s market had closed – but long before
anyone else saw its promise as a retail destination.
Her next stop was Endell Street (where milliner
Stephen Jones had his first workshop in her basement)
and when rents started to get silly there she headed – can
you guess where? – east to Shoreditch, then Hoxton.
This was when Commercial Street, now home to
every upscale brand from MAC to Chanel, was still a
grotty dump of rag trade sweatshops and the adjacent
Huguenot houses of Spitalfields were pretty much slums.
From there she made what seemed at the time – the
early 2000s – another radical move: out of London to
Hastings Old Town, before deciding on her current base:
St Leonards-on-Sea, which must currently be one of the
coolest regeneration hot spots on the whole planet.
Helen now lives – and trades – on Norman Road,
a micro-neighbourhood worthy of a PhD study
of the process of urban renewal. The western side,
which we might in the New York style call WeNor,
is a joy of independent shops, salons and cafés.
The most glorious of them is the corner spot Helen
runs with her daughter Holly, as SHOP, selling
85 wealdentimes.co.uk