The Thousands

Paul Bowles sheds light on one of our biggest quandaries: how to survive the coming decade. ‘Get down with eating cats and dogs’, he says. ‘Ditch fossil fuels and opt for rags soaked in vegetable oil’, he continues. I would like to add another point to this memo: forget stocks and software, real estate and interplanetary travel – if you want to be part of the next generation of self-made millionaires, you’ll probably have to ride on the back of hair clips and brooches.

The three creatives behind Handmade High St certainly think so, taking their business off-line and investing in a shopfront. Expanding on a model made popular by other interstaters, Handmade High St offers small, affordable retail spaces to local designers to help encourage entrepreneurship.

Handmade doesn’t have to mean cutesy-coo. It can be edgy, contemporary and even, good gosh, unisex. You’ll find textiles, home wares and kids stuff which are great, but all trumped by an honestly nice range of jewellery and small objects from labels like Lust Not Want Not, Each To Own and Bunny Hornet. With thousands of trinkets with all the take-me-home charm and wit of a young Tom Hanks, handmade might just be the trademark of our zeitgeist. It is certainly the way of the future.