The New Wave of Rare Book Dealers
Idea sells rare vintage books and magazines, so it seems about right that its shop in Soho is extremely hard to find. There’s no street signage and to describe the doorway as unassuming would be an understatement. Once located, visitors need to press one of the four buzzers that vertically spell out I-D-E-A, then state their intentions to a crackly voice on the other end. Sometimes there’s no answer, occasionally visitors are told to come back later. As and when the door unlocks, up you go.
“Not having a shop front is a filter,” says David Owen, who has been selling rare books via Idea with his wife Angela Hill for the past 15 years. “There’s a certain type of person who presses that bell; there’s a certain bravery required.”
Despite – or because of – the high barriers to entry, some big names have passed through. Calvin Klein. Kanye West. Cate Blanchett. And Idea’s scrapbook wall reveals lots more. Clients are similarly high profile: Idea stocks Dover Street Market and Marc Jacobs’ Bookmarc store, as well as the Parisian boutique Colette before it closed.
Described as the “fashion industry’s go-to art book dealer” and “the coolest bookshop in the world”, Idea has largely remained under the radar IRL. But the opposite is true online. Idea has over half a million followers on Instagram – not bad for the antiquated rare book trade.
In London, Idea isn’t the only business selling rare, hard-to-find and out-of-print literature. In recent years, it has been joined by Isabella Burley’s Climax Books, also in Soho and also in an almost hidden location, as well as Reference Point in the Strand, and Peckham Books in south London.
'There’s a certain type of person who presses that bell; there’s a certain bravery required'
“Bookshelf wealth” was labelled the first major interior design trend of 2024. And around the world, specialist book brands have been finding newfound popularity, especially within fashion. Saint Laurent just opened its own book store in Paris. Valentino's most recent menswear line at Milan Fashion Week was emblazoned with quotes from Hanya Yanagihara’s novel “A Little Life”.
What’s most striking about the new wave of rare book dealers is their customers. They are not stuffy antiquarians, nor are they particularly old. These rare book buyers seem to come from creative backgrounds and are looking for counter-cultural ephemera and visual references that cannot be found online.
Rare books are easily damaged, easy-to-steal and expensive. Idea frequently sells limited editions, such as books signed by the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat for £6,000. There are countless issues of cult Japanese magazines like Popeye, first issues of i-D magazine, Juergen Teller photography books, out-of-print drug consumer handbooks that were somehow a thing back in the 1980s. Idea’s most expensive book was a 1960s folio of mushroom drawings by John Cage that sold for £11,000. “The person who bought it buys books worth £250,000,” notes Owen.
Whether they are artists, actors, musicians or creatives, true collectors are the customers who sustain rare book dealers. Obsessives who only collect photography books by a specific photographer or sneaker magazines or books printed by Ibiza clubs during the 1980s. “People just want these objects near them,” says Owen, “It frames their mood.”