ARTS & LIFESTYLE

How Peckham Car Boot Became A Street-Style Mecca

13 November 2024

It’s 11am on a Sunday morning and the usually empty end of Bellenden Road in South East London is now swarming with people. The queue to get into the bi-monthly Peckham car boot is long, snaking down the street and then turning off onto another – but it’s also moving fast. Pound coins are pressed into hands at the entrance, and then you’re in, among rows of vintage designer garments, battered sneakers and rare football shirts. Cassette tapes abound. Lampshades knock against motocross leathers. This isn’t your grandparents’ car boot sale. No, this is more like Depop, but in real life, and without the passive aggressive messages and extortionate prices (for the most part).

Over the past couple of years, the car boot has undergone a rebrand of sorts. It’s become cool, basically, and Peckham car boot is at the forefront of the shift (see also: Princess May car boot in Dalston, Rummage in the Range in Manchester). Rather than the usual bacon butties, dusty electronics and crayon-tattooed Barbies that you might associate with the term, this one’s more of a flea market. Teen hypebeasts rub shoulders with fifty-something vintage heads and Camberwell art students looking to make a quick buck. And the crowd most definitely skews stylish. In fact, going to Peckham car boot is like a street-style fever dream: every Gen Z trend under the sun next to the sort of classic vintage looks that used to be Brick Lane mainstays (see: the groupie ’fit) and some genuinely off-the-wall outfit choices.

To understand how Peckham car boot became the thrift-du-jour of London, it’s worth taking a look at how it all began. Erin Murphy and Steven Lopes, who co-founded the car boot in 2019 in the concrete grounds of Harris Academy Peckham, tell Vogue that they had to postpone it once the pandemic hit, which led to them kick-starting an “online car boot” in the interim (selling their followers’ stuff via Instagram stories). It was then that they started noticing their IG numbers skyrocket. This, coupled with the fact that it’s Peckham, coupled with more recent word-of-mouth hype, is probably what’s behind its mammoth success – especially among fashion-y types. “I don’t think I envisioned it being what it is,” says Erin. Steven agrees, but adds that they always had high hopes. “I grew up around Peckham and there’s a young crowd as well as the locals, so we knew that there was a lot of potential there,” he says.

These days, of course, it’s how hundreds of people in the area – and way beyond – source and sell their clothes. During this most recent car boot, in the second week of November, there wasn’t one particular “type” of seller, either. I spoke to everyone from a thirty-something DJ who wanted to get rid of his old production gear, to a girl who’d just moved here from Leeds and needed to make space in her flat, to an older vintage leather jacket seller who tended to tour the local booties flogging ’70s goodies. It’s this cross-section of people – different ages, races, backgrounds and style tribes – that makes it a particularly exciting place to both buy and sell clothes, and also just people spot. Even if you don’t manage to source those secondhand Puma Speedcats that you so desperately need, you’ll at least get some inspiration for what to go looking for the next time.

Despite the fact that Peckham car boot has grown exponentially (it used to be “four cars”, whereas now it fills almost the entire outside area of the school), Erin and Steven have managed to keep it running like a well-oiled machine. There’s usually “a bit of drama”, they tell me – which is to be expected when you’re dealing with huge swathes of the public – but for the most part it’s a smooth affair. No one’s blasting loud music or chucking rubbish all over the street. And it sounds as though they’re trying their hardest to keep it cool, community-focused, and not too expensive. Professional resellers, for instance, are widely discouraged, as are the sorts of eye-watering prices you might get around Portobello. “We’ve got a really good team that we trust and everyone’s pretty chilled…” says Erin. “So yeah, I think it works well.”