Don Designer at YR Store for London Cocktail Week

London Cocktail Week is all about discovering new venues and trying out innovative concoctions. Don Designer at YR store certainly has to be up there with one of the most unusual “cocktails” of the festival, bringing together the unlikely infusion of a design-your-own-t-shirt store and a premium tequila brand seeking to make waves on this side of the Atlantic.

Plying patrons with high-percentage tequila before inviting them to design their own t-shirts might not sound like the most sensible idea – and by the looks of some of the designs, the tequila was definitely starting to do its job – but it certainly made for a novel and fun experience. YR Store is a great concept, offering customers the chance to make their own t-shirt or vest from the ground up, using intuitive touch screen computers to construct a bespoke design, before seeing it printed and pressed onto a garment right in front of their eyes.

The machines offer a plethora of images, from geometric patterns to art designs (there’s the odd Banksy in there), and allow the user to easily manipulate them by resizing, repositioning and otherwise rearranging them, before applying effects such as filters to add that finishing touch. If you find the stock images too limiting, you can even bring your own design on a USB stick, or by emailing it. The team says this has led to some amazing designs and collaborations, especially by artists.

Putting together your design is an enjoyable process and you could easily end up spending hours perfecting it. As a concept, it certainly seems the perfect antidote to the homogenising brand culture, where all too often you see people walking around with the exact same clothes as you,  which – let’s face it – none of us enjoy.

Don Julio 1942 is an exclusive tequila brand with a number of different products, each in a pleasingly designed bottle, giving the drink a satisfying, premium feel. The cocktails themselves left a little to be desired, having all been pre-mixed, but to be fair, as with any Boxpark store, space really is at a premium. It’s hard to give a fair assessment of the tequila itself without having tasted it neat. The Don really missed a trick by not lining up some shooters!

Joe Turnbull
Photos: Alessandro Fasciglione

For further information about London Cocktail Week and future events, visit here.

For further information about YR Store, visit here, and for Don Julio 1942, visit here.