Better Together: Old Meets New at Shop Pond and Filter Store’s Shared Fashion Space

Adelaide is one of those cities that, despite its 1.3 million people, can feel like a small town. It’s a place where everyone knows everyone. That’s the case for creatives Angela Carrig, Nathan Peacock and Christopher Arblaster, who knew of each other before knowing each other.

Carrig and Peacock make up Shop Pond (previously A Flat Shop), a retail destination for vintage designer fashion and local labels. Shop Pond boasts a considered roster of labels, from vintage Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto (most of its vintage is sourced from Japan) to smaller Australian names like Be Right Back, Nofunovic and Briar Will. Regardless of its brands, there’s a gentleness behind the boutique that makes it approachable.

Arblaster is behind Filter Store, an online-turned-physical shop that’s been selling preloved designer clothes, publications and ephemera since 2012. Filter’s idiosyncratic nature is complemented by Arblaster’s rich knowledge of fashion. As it reads online, Filter sells garments that are “beautiful, clever, compelling, curious, distinctive, funny, good, interesting, ludicrous, moving, novel, powerful, preposterous, ridiculous, singular, stirring, and or/striking”. Vintage Comme des Garcons, Maison Margiela and Jean Paul Gaultier are known to grace its racks.

Peacock and Arblaster tell Broadsheet they met volunteering at Format, a now-defunct music and art space that served as a meeting place for the creative community. Before their opportune encounter, the pair were already “aware of each other”, according to Peacock. Fast forward to today, and Arblaster is godfather to Carrig and Peacock’s second child.

“In Adelaide … you have to interact and do things with people that maybe you’re on a similar wavelength [with], but their interests are different from yours,” Arblaster says. “It’s a really nice thing actually.”

The friends have a long history together. They started sharing a studio space in 2018, primarily for sewing, photography and other artistic outlets. In 2019, they moved into a new studio space where they all joined forces under A Flat, trading publicly one day a week.

“Slowly it was three days, and then it was four days. We got to five days [a week],” Peacock says. Over the following four years, the studio and (occasional) retail space became a retail and (occasional) studio space.

At the end of 2023, they moved to Adelaide’s east end. Since then, they’ve been side-by-side in Ebenezer Place, running Shop Pond and Filter Store as neighbours and collaborators. There are two shop windows and two separate doors. But inside, it’s a joined space with no walls separating the two businesses.

There was minimal intervention with the shops’ interiors, with the owners leaning on DIY jobs, even picking up inspiration from some of the half-demolished cafe that was previously there. Filter’s pipe racks are painted bright yellow. “I love the busses in Adelaide,” Arblaster says. “Angela was like, ‘Oh, you should paint them yellow, like the Adelaide Metro’.”

The new location’s layout was the catalyst for A Flat unconsciously uncoupling (if you will) into Shop Pond and Filter Store. “Whilst we have a lot of crossover, we do have different selections,” Peacock says. “Some differences in taste and preference,” Arblaster jumps in. There will often be just one of the three founders working in-store each day, which means taking care of both boutiques.

Mixing business and pleasure is notoriously taboo. How have these three done it for the last seven or so years? “We’re all so close. We all trust each other,” Peacock says. “As long as you’re doing it with people that you trust, admire, respect, care about and value, and that feel the same about you, it works well completely.”

Shop Pond
Shop 4, 4/10 Ebenezer Place

Filter Store
Shop 5/4, 10 Ebenezer Place

Opening Hours
Tue to Thu 11am–5pm
Fri 11am–7pm
Sat to Sun 11am–5pm

shoppond.com.au
@_shop_pond

filterstore.com.au
@filter.store