Essentials: Eddie Prendergast of Present London

No trip to Shoreditch would be complete without a stop through Eddie Prendergast’s menswear outfitter, Present. Co-founded with fellow London-based menswear elite, Steve Davies, the history leading up to the creation of Present is as lengthy as it is dramatic and impressive. And it is this precise story that has rather fatefully played into the strength of the Present name and influence today. Building upon his extensive tenure as founder of Duffer of St. George, Eddie Prendergast created Present with the intention of creating an abode for some of the most coveted and hard-to-find labels, while also allowing it to serve as an extension of the items and trinkets that he personally has an affinity for. The shop — located off the bustling Shoreditch High Street — is a carefully curated space filled with both old and new, vintage and modern, Americana and British — but all within the constrains of Prendergast’s personal style.

And within the midst of operating the brick & mortar shop’s daily ins-and-outs, overseeing the online shop and developing his in-house label, William Fox and Sons, Prendergast possesses a rapport with his peers and staff that is unfortunately too hard to come by these days. For his part in our latest Essentials piece, Prendergast’s go-to items are an accurate representation of the simplistic yet offbeat mentality of the man himself — perhaps signaling that there’s nothing that a little American slang, two handkerchiefs (one to show and one to blow), and a Kit-Kat can’t get you.

Photography: HYPEBEAST