Accessories

The second floor at Tsakalof, opened in 2024 with sixty pieces. Leather, silver, gold vermeil and hand-blocked silk, and we can tell you who made each one.

For ten years we sold no accessories at all, on the grounds that we were bad at it and there was no point being bad at something in public. What changed was the silversmith Sofia found on Solonos in 2023, whose work was better than anything we could buy wholesale and who had nowhere to sell it. The floor opened around him.

It is one room above the shop with a north window, and it holds about a hundred pieces at any time. Nothing on it is branded hardware and nothing is bought from an agent. Six of the seven categories come from workshops of fewer than ten people.

What is upstairs

Jewellery

Silver and gold vermeil, roughly sixty per cent of it from one Athenian silversmith who still asks not to be named. Sold as single pieces, never as sets.

Bags

Four shapes from a Piraeus leather workshop and two Italian names. Unlined where the leather is good enough to go without, which is most of the time.

Shoes

The smallest category and the hardest. Two shapes from Kyoto, three from Italy, and no heel above 6cm anywhere on the floor.

Belts and small leather

Two brothers in Piraeus, cut to length in the shop while you wait if the length you need is not on the wall.

Silk scarves

Hand-blocked, in runs of thirty. The one category where we buy the same designs again each year because customers ask for them by name.

Eyewear

Acetate frames from one workshop in the Jura, glazed to prescription in Athens in about ten days.

Getting up there

The floor is stairs only. There is no lift in the building and there will not be one — it is a 1930s apartment block and the answer from the freeholder has been no three times. If stairs are difficult, tell us when you ring and we will bring the trays down to the ground floor and set the fitting room up there. It takes about ten minutes and we would rather do it than have you not come.