“There were so many pinch-me moments because I started it all in my bedroom,” says Jessica Temple, the 30-year-old stylist and sourcer behind For The Soup, the mysterious, if-you-know-you-know fashion archive obsessed over and gatekept by top stylists around the world. In the two years since she began building a collection available to rent and, occasionally, buy, Temple’s pieces have been flown out for Lady Gaga, purchased by Law Roach, and worn by Robyn, Bad Gyal, Eartheater and JT.
Inside her busy Hackney showroom sit rails upon rails of rare vintage and contemporary designer pieces, mixed in with quality, unbranded garms. The selection spans pieces by Maison Margiela, Comme des Garçons, Alaïa, Balenciaga, Prada, Vivienne Westwood, Ann Demeulemeester, John Galliano, early Acne Studios, Haider Ackermann and Alexander McQueen – among them a rare metal-sequin tank top from autumn/winter 2003, as seen on Kelis and Kate Moss – alongside, say, an aquamarine foam anime wig, or a really nice bit of tinsel, hung up and ready to be fashioned into a look.
Many of Temple’s most personally precious pieces are Karl Lagerfeld-era Fendi, including a rabbit-fur, neon-tipped, “low-ass” vest from his spring/summer 2005 collection and a reversible, floor-length dark-brown leather coat sprouting tufts of fur from autumn/winter 2002. “I’m always looking for Fendi, but I didn’t even know I was a Fendi-head until I bought that one rabbit vest,” she says, with a grin. “It wasn’t because I was obsessed with Karl that I liked those pieces, though. It’s about that one top. It’s always just about the piece in front of me.”
A Soup find is never about the name on the label. “I think if you shop like that, you won’t see as much of what the world has to offer,” says Temple. Not long ago, in Paris, she found a special dress covered in “wooden matchstick-type shapes – real wood – all along here and down here,” she says, gesturing across her chest. Intrigued, she tried to research its designer, but found little beyond a university graduate collection. “And then, recently,” she adds, “I got these leather drainpipe trousers, corseted with eyelets, with the biggest silk trains.” They, too, came from a final collection whose designer went on to work in an entirely different industry. “Those pieces really, really excite me,” she says, bursting with passion. “Because archives are about keeping things alive, right? That person’s true love for it, the reason they made it, all that hard work, all of that stuff within them, immortalised in someone else’s world.”
When stylists come in, Temple works with them to build looks, pulling individual pieces or putting together complete outfits – but she creates collections of her own, too. One night in the studio, she and designer Grete Henriette, known for her intricate chainmail work, began making keychains. Once released, they were carried by Blackpink and appeared in Ashnikko videos, while stores in New York were sending requests to stock them. She also finds immense satisfaction in sourcing for private clients, helping them to look, and feel, good. “Being a woman, being queer – there are so many politics to that,” she says. “I love to dress women. I love dressing my community. And that’s not just women – it’s everybody.” Temple has found it particularly rewarding to help her clients become the best versions of themselves, especially when their needs have gone unmet elsewhere. “I’ve had girls come in and say, ‘Babe, my confidence has never been like this. My mental health has never been like this. You made me feel so good about myself that I got a promotion.’”
Born and raised in Devon, Temple never saw herself reflected in the clothes people around her wore. “I wasn’t the girl who could go to Topshop and fit into a pair of Joni jeans,” she recalls. “And I didn’t have the money to go to Abercrombie & Fitch or Hollister.” As a teenager, she and her best friend discovered the joys of vintage. “There were all these slay one-pound charity shops, and there’d be no sizes… I started really messing up these clothes.” But people in her small town didn’t understand it. “There was a uniform, and if you weren’t wearing the same Jack Wills hoodie as everybody else, you were an outsider.” Not that she cared, of course. “Thrifting became my little ADHD safe-place fixation,” she adds. “I wanted to hunt for things that had no size, cheap tags. I wanted to make something from all of these things that nobody wanted anymore.”
When she later moved to London to study journalism, Temple found a creative community that get her. With no formal fashion background, though, it wasn’t until she lost her job as the general manager of a Dalston cinema that she began to dip her toe into retail, setting up at car boot sales and small pop-ups between part-time jobs. “I side-hustled and sold a little bit here and there – mostly my own clothes,” she says. “I remember wheeling this rack – wonky, wobbling around – all the way down Dalston High Street to get to the pub”. People went crazy over her finds. “I was selling them so cheap, babe. I was selling YSL Mombasa bags for less than 200 quid.”
It was there, at that first jumble sale at The Haggerston, that Temple met her girlfriend, the photographer Nora Nord. “She bought a pair of Fidan Novruzova boots and was like, ‘I never find shoes in my size!’ And I was like, ‘Neither do I!’” Temple becomes emotional as she describes how they have watched Soup grow together, with Nord shooting many of the images that helped build the brand in Jess’s bedroom. “Soup is Jessica, but Nora’s been there since day one. She’s carried the bags. She’s packed the suitcases. She’s crammed me into Ubers. She’s stood for 10 hours at a market sale with me,” she adds, teary-eyed.
The business grew slowly at first. “There were no savings. There was no bank account,” she says. “The decisions I had to make were so intentional. With every single piece, I was like, ‘Is this worth my money?’. No matter how much I’ve grown, that hasn’t left me.” The very name “For The Soup” was born of such struggles, and carries multiple meanings. In a poem, she once wrote, “bones for the soup”, referring to how “all of these things in life are eating you away at the flesh, and everybody thinks the flesh is the good bit. You’re being worn down to nothing. But then you realise the bone is where all the flavour is.” But there is a more literal significance, too. Growing up working-class, “food banks were super important to me. I’d get food meal tickets,” she says. “So ‘For The Soup’ stands for ‘for the soup kitchen’, too,” she adds, smiling. “The dream is still to use the money made through these clothes to give back, so that, from all these moments of luxury, something that shouldn’t need to be considered a luxury can come out of it.”