“We have teenagers coming in asking to get Leah Williamson printed on the back of their football shirt, and then we have women in their 40s getting their first ever fitting for a sports bra,” says Style Of Our Own (SOOO) London founder Laura Youngson. She’s speaking about the new hub dedicated to women’s sport that opened its doors in June.
“You just don’t know how it’s going to be received until people start walking through the door, so seeing how women are interacting with the space is just amazing,” she adds.
The immersive pop-up venue on Regent Street, which was provided by The Crown Estate, is a hub for women’s sport merchandise, kit and equipment, featuring a three-a-side football pitch, dedicated spaces for events and workshops, and screens to watch all the biggest moments of an electric summer of sport.
Youngson says a space like this – in which women’s sport is the primary focus, rather than a hastily tacked-on afterthought – is long overdue: “Some of this stuff seems so obvious in hindsight,” she says. “Even if you use just a few examples from the last couple of years, like the Women’s Euros packing out huge stadiums, or the huge number of tickets that have been sold for the Rugby World Cup in September, or Mary Earp’s jersey selling out in record time. These things tell us that a space like this should already exist.”
For football enthusiast Youngson, the journey from concept to reality has been both a test of endurance and a race against the clock. She says she didn’t even have a space until mid-March, she only got the keys to 245 Regent Street on 1 May, and its doors opened to the public just over a month later on 5 June.
“It has been a phenomenally fast turnaround to build the space, but it really shows the agility of women’s sport,” she says. “It’s already an incredible store, but it’s also changing every week. The more we learn, the more we are changing, we are constantly speaking to consumers and tweaking things. It has been really rewarding to roll into it with that entrepreneurial mindset of – ‘it’s never done, it’s never perfect, but we’ve started, and now we’re making it better.’”
Selected from more than 1,000 applicants for Westminster city council’s Meanwhile On project – which grants access to prominent retail space alongside rate relief, store design budgets and retail consultancy – SOOO was brought to life with the help of Mastercard, providing support with funding and marketing, which Youngson says was invaluable.
“Mastercard agreed to power the whole thing,” she says. “They supported us with the fit-out and making this a reality. And honestly, we couldn’t have done it without them. Their commitment to supporting women in sport, especially in the rugby space, is fantastic.”
Youngson’s background is firmly rooted in gender equality in sport. In 2017, she led a group of women to the top of Kilimanjaro to play a record-breaking high-altitude football match with Equal Playing Field, a grassroots initiative to challenge gender inequality in sport. Three years later, she launched Ida Sports, a sports company that creates football boots specially engineered for women’s bodies.
“Women generally have differently shaped feet,” says Youngson. “We tend to have narrow heels, higher arches, and a wider toe box. So when we are wearing shoes made for men, it begins to create all these problems.”
In fact, research in 2023 found that more than 80% of female players at top European clubs suffer regular discomfort because of their boots, and incorrect footwear has also been linked to an increased risk of serious ACL injuries.
“We changed the shape of the shoe to be more comfy, and the next thing we did was look at performance,” says Youngson. “Women’s hips are farther apart, so how we interact with the ground is different. So we changed the outsole and the stud configuration of our boots in order to better work for the female body.”
Beyond the innovative science that powers their shoes, IDA also offers women a wide range of choice in terms of design, colour and style. Female athletes – from the top flights right down to the weekend warriors – are used to walking into sports shops and sometimes not even being able to find the women’s sport section.
“I remember walking into so many stores and seeing men’s, kid’s, and that’s it,” says Youngson. “I would have to ask if they had women’s boots and then they would look at me like I was crazy.” For Youngson, providing choice is about more than having fun colourways to pick from, it’s about validation and finally feeling seen.
“It’s so important to feel like you matter, and that you have value as a player,” she adds. “The industry approach traditionally has been ‘shrink it and pink it’, but we have been listening to female consumers and designing for what they actually want.”
Branching out into the retail space feels like a natural progression for Youngson. Her ethos is community-driven and the aim with SOOO is to foster a sense of belonging for women and girls. This comes through in the details of the venue, from the intimates area – offering sports bra fittings and a space to learn about leak-proof period underwear – to community watch parties, to one of Youngson’s favourite features: the miniature indoor pitch shoppers can use for a casual kickabout, or to test out their new gear.
“There’s a big thing about boys dominating the space on football pitches, and how that presence can be intimidating and offputting for girls,” she says. “At SOOO I wanted girls and women to feel that they were not only welcome, but invited.”
Youngson has already seen the impact of this sense of inclusion: “People walk in and they breathe out with this sense of relief,” she says. “It’s like they’ve found their home.”
SOOO has already attracted the likes of Mo Farah (with his teenage daughters in tow), and Serena Williams’s husband Alexis Ohanian made an impromptu visit during Wimbledon. For Youngson, celebrity endorsement is encouraging and exciting, but it’s the grassroots element of the women’s sport ecosystem that she cares about the most.
“Ultimately, it is a place to inspire, and to get inspired,” she says. “A place to try something new and a place to find your people.”
You can find SOOO London at 245 Regents Street, open until October
