Swop’s South Melbourne Store Is Its Most Ambitious Yet

Swop’s newest store could easily be mistaken for a modern art gallery or a warehouse rave site. The corner building was once an axe-throwing location and a Crossfit gym. Now it houses Swop’s fourth national store, the brand’s biggest and most ambitious location yet.

Although the chain was founded in Brisbane, with a single outpost there and one each in Melbourne and Sydney, it chose Melbourne as the city that needed a second store. “Melbourne has always had a really strong appreciation for what we do. It’s a city that values style, individuality and considered living, which naturally aligns,” Swop founder Brigid Gordon says. 

Swop serves both buyers and sellers. Its varied and extensive stock of pre-loved clothes (ranging from designer pieces and vintage finds to local labels and current trends) is sourced by its fashion community, who sell their pieces for 30 per cent of the sale value in cash or 50 per cent as store credit.

Anybody who has visited Swop’s Collingwood location on a weekend knows that the spacious warehouse can start to feel cramped when it is heaving with eager shoppers. Gordon and her team were also privy to feedback that “there was a clear need for something more accessible for those living on the other side of the river”. 

Gordon was less concerned about what south side suburb she wanted Swop to reside in; it was more about finding an appropriate space that felt accommodating enough for the vision she had. The 500-square-metre lot in South Melbourne felt right. Its dramatic, enormous walls of windows, and the way sunlight fed through them, were one of the first things that caught Gordon’s eye.

“It was one of those places where you could immediately feel the atmosphere and see the potential. It reminded me of those films from the ’80s and ’90s, where characters are living and working in these incredibly beautiful warehouse spaces. There’s a quiet romance to them, and I wanted to capture a little of that feeling here.”

There wasn’t a previous retail tenant to serve as a base for Swop’s layout – axe-throwing and high-intensity fitness training don’t make for a typical fashion store blueprint. “Because it isn’t a conventional retail environment, it also gave us the freedom to think differently,” she says. 

Gordon worked with long-time collaborators and friends William McRoberts and Joseph Gardner, of Sydney-based Studio Gardner, on the design. “We wanted it to feel more like a gallery, somewhere you’d want to linger … We wanted it to feel inspiring, not just functional, and to encourage people to enjoy and explore.”

Each Swop location is fitted out with distinctive furniture pieces – to go with the rare fashion pieces available in-store. Brunswick East maker Weston Fab made the racks, and Heidelberg Heights-based Cessa Furniture headed up the joinery. Some notable pieces chosen by Studio Garner include BMDO and Oigall Projects’ Leo coffee table, the custom steel coffee tables by Sydney’s Galerie Terminus and the brutalist Stos lamp by Melbourne’s Brud Studia.

One of Gordon’s favourite design touches is the Australian-made planter by Second Edition for Cranbrook Workshop, which houses a four-metre-tall tree from Florian Wild. She also loves the “fun and playful” vintage inflatable sofa by Gunter Sulz. 

“We’re lucky to have a space of this size, which allows us to scale our in-store offering more comfortably. It creates a more expansive and immersive experience, and gives us the opportunity to present a larger, more considered curation for our customers,” Gordon says.

Swop South Melbourne
82 Clarke St, South Melbourne

Hours:
Daily 10am–6pm

swop.net.au
@_swop