Jake Burt knows it’s hard to get his clothes. He wishes it were easier. It won’t be anytime soon.
Mr. Burt’s clothes, like winsome riffs on Dickies-style work jackets and a Fair Isle cardigan with a hood in a leopard motif that would tickle Zsa Zsa Gabor, are available only at Jake’s, his snug shop off Victoria Park in London. Oh, and it’s open only on Saturdays from 11 to 6. To buy a Jake’s garment, you have to buy it from Jake himself.
“Nothing feels better than selling something,” said Mr. Burt, 34. If he’s a designer by trade, he’s a shopkeeper by blood. Mr. Burt’s parents are “restless business people” who throughout his young life ran market stalls around Somerset in the south of England. He gets a thrill from hand-to-hand commerce.
“It’s not the money,” Mr. Burt said. “It’s that someone will pay for it.”
Mr. Burt has staged pop-ups in Tokyo and New York, but they are infrequent. A few months ago, he told me he would open a pop-up in New York in February. February became April, which became May.
“I’m a really disorganized person,” Mr. Burt said.
But he is an exquisite designer. Mr. Burt’s clothes have a thrifted quality, like something you’d find in the nosebleed section of your parent’s closet and think, “Wait, when was my dad cool?”
“It’s almost like if you took Patagonia or the North Face and merged it with Margiela,” said Brian Molloy, a stylist who owns sweaters and jackets from Mr. Burt. “There’s this sportiness there, but it’s conceptually redone.”
Cardigans (450 British pounds, or about $608) are produced in London, not far from Mr. Burt’s shop. His aptly named “horse jackets” (595 pounds, or about $804) are assembled by hand, like mosaic backsplashes, from disused nylon horse blankets that he buys from British laundries.
“You don’t know how long that green jacket’s going to last,” Mr. Molloy said. “It gives the pieces a sense of urgency.”
The central quirk of many Jake’s pieces is the contrasting hood, like a Roman candle shoved into a birthday cake. His nylon zip jackets brandish hoods in schoolboy stripes. A felted purple zip-up (495 pounds, or about $672) comes with a flamingo-pink hood.
But the inaccessibility of what Mr. Burt creates is really what’s central to its appeal. Clothes shopping today is a game of online ease and next-day shipping. We take for granted how effortless it is to acquire the clothes we want. Mr. Burt’s approach is a less hospitable throwback: a shop run by a single person who functions as designer, cashier and custodian. Jake’s is more 1976 than 2026.
“When everything is so easily accessible, that’s the best part,” said Nick Tran, the head of buying at Dover Street Market in Paris, who owns several items from Mr. Burt.
Mr. Tran said he hadn’t tried to persuade Mr. Burt to sell his line at Dover Street. It would ruin the mystique. You can’t recreate moments when Mr. Burt mixes you a martini or passes you a cardigan off the rack, or you run into a friend as you try it on.
“It’s his own thing that needs to stay its own thing,” Mr. Tran said.
Still, people don’t like to be told they can’t buy something. Would-be shoppers turn snippy when Mr. Burt informs them that he has no online store. The comments on his Instagram account are sprinkled with pleas for him to ship them a jacket.
“It’s frustrating when you’re in New York and you’re trying to get something from London,” said Maisie Willoughby, the chief marketing officer at Timberland. When Mr. Burt hosted a pop-up in New York last year, Ms. Willoughby purchased multiple items, including a white cardigan with a leopard hood that she said was “everyone’s favorite.”
Mr. Burt hears his customers’ frustrations. They bum him out. And he does hope to open a simple online shop soon, but he isn’t making any promises. After all, Jake’s isn’t even the only label he runs.
For the past eight years, he has been an owner of the British fashion label Stefan Cooke. Mr. Burt and Stefan Cooke, the man, have been romantic partners for 14 years and creative partners for more than half of that. They graduated together from the master’s program at Central Saint Martins, the arts and design college in London. Mr. Cooke studied textile design, while Mr. Burt studied women’s wear.
When Mr. Cooke won the annual H&M Design Award for his graduate collection, netting about 50,000 euros (roughly $58,000), the pair agreed that Mr. Burt would help Mr. Cooke get his label going.
“I was tired of education at that point, and I was so ready to not have to put my name on something,” Mr. Burt said.
Today Stefan Cooke operates as respectable a business as an independent fashion label can hope for. It’s stocked online at Ssense and in Tokyo at Dover Street Market. Timothée Chalamet and Robyn have worn pieces from the label.
Yet, over the years, the cost of making clothes has crept up, forcing the pair to reflect that in their prices. Mr. Burt began to feel “a disconnect between the person we were designing for and the person who could afford it.”
On a trip to Tokyo in 2024, as he wove around cubbyhole boutiques selling clothes and doodads he couldn’t find anywhere else, he began to see a pathway for a different sort of business, one tethered to craft rather than the catwalk. By skirting a wholesale markup, his clothes could be moderately more affordable.
Mr. Burt opened Jake’s in November 2024, dusting off ideas he had long been sitting on. The leopard hood, derived from a real leopard muff he bought for 10 quid at a London flea market, was a nod to his mother. (“Leopard’s the one trashy thing she likes,” he said.) The rugby stripes reflect his obsession with the look of sports. The Jake’s logo is a hand-drawn riff on the logo of the St. Louis Blues hockey team, with a “J” wedged in.
While many clothing designers say they just want to make clothes they’d wear, Mr. Burt doesn’t own a single item he has designed.
“I’ve chosen things a couple times, and then I’ll wear it to the store, and someone’s like, Oh, but that’s the one I want,” he said. So he took the knit off his back and sold it. He’d rather have the sale than the sweater.
Mr. Burt has landed himself in an unlikely realm: that of hype. Streetwear news accounts post about his clothes. Three separate designers I know of — one in New York, one in New Delhi and one in Paris — own Mr. Burt’s clothes. During his travels to Japan, customers have taken photos with him.
With two brands, I wondered if Mr. Burt felt his time was strained.
“I’d loved to have a bit more of a team, like a design team, so I can make a bigger range,” said Mr. Burt, who is prototyping jeans, shoes and a leather bag right now.
Mostly, he dreams of outposts in New York and Tokyo, where he can meet shoppers and see how they light up when they try on a sweater. Each would have a bed, he said, “so that wherever I go between them, I can just stay in my own little shop.”
Jacob Gallagher is a Times reporter covering fashion and style.
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