London concept store APOC has created an alternative fashion gift list
From its eclectic roster of boundary-pushing, sustainably minded designers, APOC presents its alternative fashion gift edit – comprising one-off clothing, jewellery and accessories
At the end of each year, London-based concept store APOC collates a satisfyingly eclectic – and delightfully weird – alternative fashion gift list, comprising clothing, jewellery and accessories from its energetic roster of emerging, avant-garde designers.
A riposte the the season’s unfettered consumption, the various pieces on offer are created using deadstock materials, or upcycled existing styles, to create the limited-edition drops. Each piece is created by the artists and their teams in-house, rather than in factories, while some pieces are entirely one-off.
APOC Store’s alternative fashion gift list
The typically vivid array of pieces spans Soft Skin Latex’s colourful latex handbags, each adorned with an enormous bow (no need for wrapping), Gnastiy’s own sculptural handbags, which appear crafted from molten metal (the brainchild of Chinese designers Vicki Tsang and Di Yi), or Invasive Modification’s made-to-order hybrid boots, which combine a satin-lace body with shiny plastic ’kitten heels’ (the designer is based in Tbilisi, Georgia, a rising fashion city).
Other highlights include the colourful hair pieces of Tomihiro Kono, a Japanese hair artist who has worked with the likes of Junya Watanabe. Here, sections of hair are adorned with animé eyes, cherries or hearts. ‘Wearing a wig also enables us an instant transformation,’ Kono wrote in his book Personas 111, released last year. ‘It is fun to create multiple characters that exist in ourselves – it is almost like choosing your outfit of the day from your wardrobe.’
APOC Store was founded by Ying Suen and Jules Volleberg in the autumn of 2020, stocking what it calls ’progressive and consciously created pieces’. Its name is an amalgam of ‘Anthropocene’, ‘epoch’ and ‘apocalypse’. ‘We live in the Anthropocene, a time when human activity dominates the world we live in with enormous consequences,’ they say. ‘As a result, a new generation of creatives has emerged who care about the world and want to make a difference.
’Every year, we always tried to get a special gift for our loved ones, ideally something unexpected and something they wouldn’t get themselves,’ Volleberg told Wallpaper* last year. ‘We wanted to do a launch of special products that are made with minimal impact, mostly by the designers themselves in their own studios, and often from remade or deadstock materials.’
Discover the APOC Holidays 2023 collection at the APOC Store website.
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Jack Moss is the Fashion Features Editor at Wallpaper*, joining the team in 2022. Having previously been the digital features editor at AnOther and digital editor at 10 and 10 Men magazines, he has also contributed to titles including i-D, Dazed, 10 Magazine, Mr Porter’s The Journal and more, while also featuring in Dazed: 32 Years Confused: The Covers, published by Rizzoli. He is particularly interested in the moments when fashion intersects with other creative disciplines – notably art and design – as well as championing a new generation of international talent and reporting from international fashion weeks. Across his career, he has interviewed the fashion industry’s leading figures, including Rick Owens, Pieter Mulier, Jonathan Anderson, Grace Wales Bonner, Christian Lacroix, Kate Moss and Manolo Blahnik.
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