Palace Built Itself a Palace For Its London Flagship (Exclusive)
Real streetwear heads will know this legendary lore: in the late 2000s, a dilapidated, slightly skuzzy South London flat — affectionately nicknamed “the Palace,” and occupied by the Palace Wayward Boys Choir skate gang — became the unlikely origin point for what’s become one of Britain’s biggest brands.
The brand, if you hadn’t already sussed it out, is Palace Skateboards.
It’s been 17 years since co-founders Lev Tanju and Gareth Skewis first launched the label, churning out small-batch skate decks and T-shirts riffing on luxury fashion house logos, and a lot has changed. Including, crucially, their digs. On November 5, Palace opens the doors to a new flagship that lives up to the brand’s name: the sprawling 8 Poland Street location occupies nearly 2,700 square feet and feels as much a store as a cultural landmark.
Inside, an amalgamation of design inspirations — from the British Museum to English churches to historic local skate spots — adds up to something that feels fit for the legacy Palace has built in less than two decades. Visitors will find archival imagery next to stained-glass windows, alongside the brand’s signature Tri-Ferg transformed into a raw oak bench and stool.
And product, of course. So, so much product. Alongside its regular wares and skate decks, Palace went all out for its London launch: its surprise banger of a Burberry collaboration will be exclusively available in-store, alongside an extra set of store-exclusive merch centered around the number 8 — a nod to the location’s address, rotated 90 degrees to become an infinite symbol.
The Poland Street store may sit within the same city limits as the original crash pad in Waterloo, but these two points in the brand’s history feel worlds apart. Palace may have stores all around the world, but there’s something about growing into its own in the city it calls home that feels fitting, especially as it nears its 18th anniversary. Ahead of the flagship store’s launch, we caught up with Tanju to talk about paying architectural homage to the London skate scene and how that legendary Burberry link-up actually happened.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Why frame a skate shop as a museum, and how do you keep it from feeling precious or inaccessible for the kids who actually skate?
The museum thing is a bit tongue-in-cheek; it’s really just a Palace shop with a collection of Palace artifacts that are special to us. For me, it makes the shop feel more special and personal — not just a new build with a coffee machine and some marble in it.
The P-shaped marble tiles match the original shop, and the Rolls-Royce grille came from Brewer Street. How did you decide which pieces of Palace history made it into the new store, and did you have to leave anything out that you really wanted to include?
The grille came from my grandad's old restaurant in South London, along with the photo of the Queen in the changing room. We picked what we thought made the Brewer Street shop, our first store, special and moved them over to the new one so it felt like home.
The store also has a few surviving seats from the old Victoria Benches skate spot, and there’s a rumor that some of the other seating came from a church seen in a famous skate video. What’s the story there?
The story behind Victoria Benches was that when they started knocking down the spot, I hounded Greg Finch, who works for us, to find out how we could get some [benches]. He did some research, and we paid one of the builders knocking the spot down for three benches that we kept on ice until we knew what we wanted to do with them. It’s an important piece of skate history, and we wanted to save a bit of it; it was one of the most iconic London skate spots. And we made the other bench; it didn’t come from a church. I like the rumor, though!
What does this new Poland Street flagship say about the larger Palace story, in terms of the brand's history and the space it occupies today?
We wanted a bigger space and a fresh look to the store. We have some lovely shops around the world now, so we wanted to give London something special. Plus, I think the old landlords were pricks, and now we don’t have to deal with them. So that’s cool too.
We called the Burberry collab obvious in hindsight, but it came out of nowhere. How did it actually come about, and why sell it only at Poland Street instead of online?
Every time we open a new location, we want to do something special. And because we’re a London brand, we wanted to do something really, really special. We’re big fans of Burberry and know some lovely people that work there, so we just hit them up about it, and they loved the idea. It’s really cool to be able to buy something from only one store in the world; it reminds me of how shops used to be. It makes you venture out and appreciate the experience and what you’ve bought.
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