DevilCLOT is a collaboration between the Japanese brand Devilock and Hong Kong’s CLOT label. The shop is actually a temporary store that opens on November 15th and closes for good at the end of December. How much more exclusive can you get? Limited edition clothing for sale in a shop with a time limit!
Temporary high-end retail seems to be in vogue. French hybrid brand Kitsune recently opened a temporary boutique in Milan. There’s also been a touring shop that travels around the world selling exclusive streetwear.
[photopress:CLOT_Edison_HK_Devil.jpg,full,pp_image]The location of DevilCLOT is interesting. It’s at the very start of Hong Kong’s Soho neighborhood. (Soho in this case stands for ‘South of Hollywood’.) It’s actually on the main passage way into the area, being located both next to the escalator and on the corner of Hollywood Road. The Soho neighborhood has excellent foot traffic due to its abundance of foreign-food restaurants. Though there are a handful of clothing stores in Soho, there are no other street wear labels nearby. The building that it’s in has recently undergone a renovation. It’s been renamed from the original Al Aqmar House, to Shama Place (Shama being a hotel / serviced apartment conglomerate.)
[photopress:Shama_Place_30_Hollywood_Ro.jpg,full,pp_image]Historically, the building didn’t do well for shops. Though certain floors can be seen from the escalator, which itself guarantees tens of thousands of eyeballs every day, getting people to get off and enter the building has seemingly been a challenge. Salons, wine stores and home furnishing shops have all open and closed. The entrance to the building is located on Shelley Street.
If you’re walking down Shelley Street, traditionally, the right side of the escalator doesn’t get the same foot traffic as the left side, simply three steps away. This is due to the fact that the right side is a much more narrow space. Recently this has begun to change due to the four newish restaurants on the right hand side.
It makes sense to have CLOT open a shop in the building for a limited time. It’s an excellent strategy to drum up foot traffic and have people get used to entering the space. The building is guaranteed to get a certain amount of exposure once the shop opens due to the long lines that form for people interested in purchasing limited edition items.
If you’re a real estate developer sitting on a similar property, placing a temporary shop for an exclusive brand is a brilliant strategy. Essentially it adds value to the space. It’s similar to the provenance of a painting.
Hong Kong underground music fans might remember the building as the former site of Amnesia, a small club which hosted occasional Drum N Bass parties and a few cool band shows, the most infamous being Japan’s Electric Eel Shock.
DevilCLOT is the second CLOT shop, the first being JUICE in Causeway Bay. That store has hosted a handful of interesting events and has become an important destination on Hong Kong’s street fashion scene.
The address of DevilClot is: Shop A, Upper Ground Floor, No.30 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong. It’s located on the corner of Shelley Street and Hollywood Road.
