Words: Sophia Alexandra Hall
CHRISTMAS SHOPPING
Wearing a hot-pink sweatshirt with wide, black-rimmed glasses, Olivia Colman is in possibly the last place you might expect to see her – behind the till of a bustling shop on Carnaby Street.
Perhaps even more surprisingly, the Oscar-winning actress is joined by Jamie Dornan, expertly holding out a card machine to the next customer in a snaking line.
This was the scene at the Choose Love store on 22 November, a pop-up shop that does things differently. Inside the pink-and-white, glitter-filled store you’ll find games, a sleeping bag, sanitary products and coats laid out around the open plan shopfront, but none of these items are for sale.
Instead of buying a product for yourself, the shop invites customers to buy an item or support service for a refugee in need somewhere in the world. Items available range from mental health support to funds to reunite families, to warm clothing. You can buy someone living in a refugee camp or under the threat of air raids access to life-saving medical treatment for £40. A sea rescue comes in at £50.
The organisation is supported by a host of famous faces, and some of them have turned up to the shop’s launch to work behind the till. I’ve come along to volunteer too.
“Choose Love started with a few friends at a boozy Sunday lunch wanting to do something,” writer, presenter and co-founder Dawn O’Porter says, as she meets me outside the shop on a chilly November afternoon. “In 2015 we collected one truckload worth of donations for refugees and sent those to Calais. And now eight years later, Choose Love is the biggest source of aid to refugees across the world.”
Gesturing behind her to the storefront, decorated with giant printed letters spelling out the organisation’s name, O’Porter says, “Rather than buying tat this Christmas, you can come in and buy something for somebody who really needs it. And then detail what you bought into a cute little card and give it to someone and say you did this in their name.”
Customers tick the items off the list available and then pay at the till for what they would like to donate.
Each year the UK spends £700 million on unwanted Christmas gifts, and recent statistics by GWP have found that just 1% of all gifts give
