The City of Westminster is considering renaming Chiltern Street to Monocle Row. The magazine’s spin offs occupy several storefronts on this quaint corner of Marylebone with a Monocle café and the Trunk marque, which now includes both a men’s clothing store and a (fairly) recently opened accessories store called Trunk Labs.

The shop has thoughtful selection from brands like Alden, Rimowa luggage, Sanders & Sanders, London Undercover, Aspesi and many more. It feels English, European and Japanese all at the same time. It’s the kind of place that makes you want to buy a ceramic dish, a pen from Japan and a cashmere throw. It’s a store for discovering something new and for buying gifts for yourself.

The staff is friendly and engaging without being too friendly and too engaging. The display furniture in the shop is a wonderfully assembled collection of mid-century modern, which brings a nice Scandinavian touch to the shop and keeps the store perfectly consistent with the handsome Monocle offices down the road. The selection at Trunk Labs fits together nicely with its brother Trunk Clothiers (which opened in 2010) a few doors down, which makes sense considering both shops were founded by Mats Klingberg. If the retail spaces on Chiltern Street were bigger, one would assume that both Trunk shops would be better together under one roof, but it seems they work just as well apart. You can shop at Trunk Labs then walk a bit, have a flat white at the Monocle Cafe and then get back into it at Trunk Clothiers. The area reminds me of what Freemans Sporting Club has done on Rivington Street in New York in the way that there’s a concentration of cool places from a specific group all together on one block. There’s also word that Andre Balazs is opening a hotel in a firehouse across from the Trunks, which will further cement Chiltern Street as a destination for good things. –MW

Trunk Labs | 34 Chiltern Street London W1U 7QH | +44 20 7486 2357