Larkin & Catcher

A number of people have asked us where the name Larkin & Catcher came from, so here’s the explanation (take a seat…).

Two of us were renting a small apartment in a creepy old house in Scotland. There was something not quite right about the atmosphere of that place – lights dimmed for no apparent reason; there would be a tapping on the door or sometimes the window but no-one was there when we checked. But it was convenient for what we were doing at the time and the rent was cheap. After we’d been there for around a month we went away for a couple of days and when we got back we found it all locked up just as we left it. But when we opened the wardrobe (which looked Victorian) there was something in it that definitely had not been there before we left.

Our items in the wardrobe had all been pushed to the far ends and smack in the middle was now a ancient-looking long flowing white robe. I thought it looked like an antique nightdress but the person I was with said he thought it looked more like a shroud. Neither of us wanted to touch it so we just grabbed our own stuff out of there and closed the door on the thing. That night I was kind of spooked out because not only had someone let themselves into our room while we were away — to put what looked like a vampire’s dress in our wardrobe – but I was sharing a room with someone who knew what a shroud looked like.

We were out the next day and when we got back the dress/shroud was gone. Clearly someone had keys to our flat and was going in and out when we were not there –though we didn’t think it was the landlord, as he lived abroad and was near-impossible to contact. We knocked on the doors of some of the other apartments but got no answer – then we realised that we’d never seen another living soul in that big old building.

About a week later I opened a drawer of a cabinet and – same thing – all my things had been pushed aside and ‘something’ had been placed in the middle. We moved away not long after that.

Years later and some of us are putting together plans for a business but we can’t agree on a name. Later, we’re sitting around telling stories and I come up with the tale of the creepy house and say what was in the cabinet drawer was two books.

Someone – possibly me — suggests calling the business after the book titles and as it is late and we’ve been ‘celebrating’ we think it is a good idea to use this temporary name until we come up with the real one. So we use it, but we – and everyone else – gets so used to it that it sticks.

The books were The Catcher in the Rye and the Collected Works of Philip Larkin  

We’ve not had a competition for a while and — as we’ve just been writing about *Dita Von Teese on another blog — we thought we’d do one on style icons, past and present.

What you need to do is send us your choice of one style icon from the past and one from the present — and give reasons for your choices. Results to be published here and on the Very Best Things blog. The Prize will be a fabulous little something from our store and the winner will be whoever makes the best argument for her or his style icon choices.

One of our top style icons from the past must be the ex Ziegfeld Girl and silent screen star from the 1920’s, Louise Brooks.

Brooks was a classical beauty but had a very distinctive, quirky look about her and we think her style dates well. She could look quite girlie at times and was excellent at playing the vamp but she also had a sort of androgynous appeal.

* we were defending Dita’s (we’re on first name terms…) choice of footwear. Someone was accusing her of being frumpy. I know, the very nerve of it.

“A wonderful little online store, full of unusual gifts” – check it out for yourself and don’t forget to have a go at the competition.

Spring is in the air! Celebrate by using the code HAPPY at checkout to make sure you receive a 20% discount off your purchases. Offer ends tonight– remember: HAPPY