Underground and growing

MELBOURNE designer Andrew Chiodo's combination of inconspicuous store and superbly stylish stock is spreading to Sydney and beyond.

Andrew Chiodo

FOR more than a decade, Andrew Chiodo's menswear store in Melbourne has been the place to seek out for quality men's clothing with just the right amount of cool.

And when we say “seek out” we mean it. While his store, Chiodo, might be centrally located on the corner of Little Collins and Russell streets in the CBD, it’s certainly easy to miss, considering it’s located underground and has minimal signage.

Chiodo recently opened his second store, this time in Sydney’s Potts Point, and if all goes according to plan he will open as many as six stores around the world over the next 18 months. “The Sydney store is the litmus test,” he says. “I have an investor in this store and he wants to roll more out. I was always content to have just Melbourne and Sydney and maybe down the track a store somewhere like Milan. But he’s been a big fan of mine for many years and he came in one day and bought some shirts and when I told him I was opening in Sydney, he said: ‘Can I be your partner?’ And I just said: ‘I suppose so’.”

Speak to Chiodo for a short time and you get the feeling this is how he always does business. He says he had wanted to open in Sydney for a while but couldn’t find the right location. “I was half-heartedly wanting to do it but the right space never came along,” he says, over coffee in his Challis Avenue store two days before it opened and just minutes after the builders had moved out. “Then I was in Sydney one day to visit the Biennale and I was sitting across the road from here and there was a For Lease sign on the building and I walked in and thought: ‘This is it; let’s do it’.”

Chiodo’s Melbourne store caters to men and women but in Sydney it will be menswear only, at least for the time being. “We’ll see how it goes. If I have to put in women’s to give it another kick then I will, but men’s has always been my strength,” he says.

He stocks his own brand as well as a small selection of fashion and accessories brands such as Commes
des Garcons, Junya Watanabe and Y-3. “Some of my best clients are Sydney-based men so I’m not going to change my formula too much. I’m going to do my handwriting and slightly modify it down the track if I need to because of climate and lifestyle differences, but the flavour will be the same because that’s what people like and that’s all I really know.”

He also knows that people like shopping if the retail experience is a good one. Chiodo says he’s planning on launching an e-commerce website but bricks and mortar is where his heart is. “I’ve never bought one thing online. I like walking into a store, smelling the fragrance, listening to the music and just getting the feel and the mood of the place.”