An ornate and characterful old building on Renshaw Street, it's packed with literally dozens of different vintage, secondhand and independent clothes boutiques. Some are lavishly decorated and include characterful dressing rooms and eccentric owners whilst others are more basic / no-frills store-fronts with a till and a few display units.
Most of the stores from Venus In Furs, Somewhere In Time and Curious Orange to Total Recall, Preserved and Hepibazaar are reasonably priced and usually have some great items hidden amongst the racks. There's also a few jewellery and accessory stalls, a dressmakers, a seamstress and a record shop.
Grand Central kind of looks what it sounds like - it resembles a Victorian railway station, at least the entrance. I had no idea what I could expect when I entered the building out of sheer curiosity. A sign just behind the entrance read "50 shops" - and I was thrilled! This building and it's weird atmosphere could only be home to really cool shops...
Well, so it is. On three floors, the weirdest stuff ranging from bowler hats to "Punk is not dead" shirts, from handbags consisting only of zippers (yup!) to feather boas, from 60's style flower dresses to second-hand bow-ties, is sold. You can get nearly everything here that is either useless or stylish or both. In several of the shops, the owners sew and tailor themselves so all products are unique. Others seem to be closed most time of the day but the owner is just next door for a chat and will pop up next to you if you get lost in thoughts how cool that weird hat just over there would look on your head at the next motto party... There are shopkeepers who smell like they smoked a joint a minute ago and others who are busy sewing little trousers that will make your toddler look like a clown. And in the middle of all of it, there's the coolest rasta I've ever met. Don't miss his shop (it's the one with the giant variety of crazy hats and scarfs on the lowest level called "Hatz B4U Asssk")!
