It’s a Sunday afternoon in early September and there’s a long line of teenagers patiently queueing outside a store in Dean Street in London’s Soho. Inside the shop, Austin Robertson, 19, is at the till, fist-bumping clients as they leave, visibly satisfied with their purchases. “Some [of them] are waiting seven hours in the queue,” he says, swiping another card. “People were camping outside on Friday night at 2am, and last night we had people [camping] too.”
Robertson is a TikTok influencer who, together with peers Jack Harris and Elliot Renshaw, co-founded Stocked, a vintage pop-up event on its second edition. The first one, held in June in London’s Shoreditch, reached a turnover just shy of £50,000 by selling ’90s and early 2000s streetwear to shoppers as young as 13. This event will make £100,000 in sales by the end of the weekend.