SH!

By Eleanor Brown

Hey girls! In here! I’m walking through the open doors of an East End sex shop a stones throw away from The White Cube, a gallery that showed wall to wall pictures of Tracey Emin with legs akimbo in an exhibition earlier this year. It’s always been a bit dirty around here, despite the new gentrification - but really! This is no ordinary sex shop however - if there is such a thing. This little gem is Sh! A women’s only sex shop and I’m going to tell all you girls who have been to shy to take a peek and all you guys who aren’t allowed in here without a lady by your side the secrets that lay within…

Sh! claim to have the biggest selection of female focussed sex toys in the UK and the pink painted walls are lined with shelves full of vibrators, dildo’s and sex products. There are also class glass display cabinets showing of the latest and greatest offerings and loads of information stuck everywhere explaining what things do and how to use them. If you stand with your mouth open for more than a couple of minutes then one of the shop girls will probably come to your assistance in a very non intimidating -if a little flirtatious kind of way.

On the shop floor are two tables covered in vibrators, one stacked up with small vibrators cunningly disguised as lipsticks and dolphins; the other with larger brightly coloured cock shaped vibrators priced between £18-£45. A lot of these are manufactured by a company called Fun Factory who have been chosen because of their particular attention to design and detail and the fact they are an ethical trading company.

This shopping experience isn’t some new Shoreditch trend or the latest shop on the block. Sh! has been here since 1992 and has attracted many loyal fans and been an inspiration to many. Seven years ago Miss Summers stuck her toeless fluffy mule out of a limousine parked outside and waltzed into the shop followed by her espionage. They then proceeded to take notes of everything that they saw and went away and replicated it to create the now very women friendly Anne Summers shops. Imitation is after all the sincerest form of flattery! But Sh! Is a world apart from Anne Summers in that it seeks to offer an education as well as a sexual experience. This is apparent in everything from the manuals and leaflets on the shop floor down to the smallest detail of the Girl Guide style badges on the staff uniforms indicating the assistant’s level of training. These range from a dildo or bondage badge to the sexual health badge that takes two years of training to get. The Sh! staff are regularly sent on training workshops and attend conferences where they meet with doctors and sex therapists where they can prepare to answer your sex related questions. I was really impressed by how serious and excited everyone working there was about helping and improving the quality of women’s sex lives. Stop tittering this is all serious stuff! Luckily Sh! Has married it perfectly with lashings of fun that make a visit to this shop a truly pleasurable shopping experience.

SH!
57 Hoxton Square
N1 6HD
020 76135458
www.sh-womenstore.com