On the wall of Climax’s New York outpost there is a green figure wearing red heels, fishnets and barely-there underwear. Her back is turned to show off her butt, which has the words ‘Climax’ written across it in pink bubble letters, and her head, with its bob of flaming red hair, turns to look haughtily at whoever walks through the doors of the East 4th Street bookstore. This ‘angry, sexy bookworm’, as Climax’s founder, Isabella Burley, describes her, is part of the Climax x Chopova Lowena collaboration that launched just before Climax’s New York opening on 5 September 2024. She might seem like a strange mascot for a bookstore, but then, Climax is anything but typical.
Founded in London in 2020, Climax is a distributor of rare or overlooked books, ephemera, periodicals, erotica, and other forms of media on art and counterculture. It’s a place where those who are perpetually hungry for ideas and imagery can satisfy their appetites with objects like Hiromi Tsuchida’s Tokyo Dolls: Blue Flower, a rare book that documents the lives of transgender women in 1970s Tokyo; Cosey Fanni Tutti’s 1987 pink VHS tape of her performances; a postcard of Cindy Sherman’s 1994 Comme des Garçons ad campaign; and other artefacts from the history of disruptive, creative thought.
Inside Isabella Burley’s Climax bookstore in New York
It began as a pandemic passion project for Burley, who is the former editor-in-chief of Dazed magazine and current chief marketing officer for Acne Studios. In the years since, Climax has turned into an ever-expanding entity that is a brand as much as it is a bookstore. As Burley says, ‘it's about us not just being seen as a second-hand bookstore but having a world, a kind of universe around us that encompasses many different things, not just books. I think books are the foundation of Climax and what we've been trying to do, but it's really fun to think: what is Climax beyond that?’
So Climax has also become a space for collaborative fashion ventures – first, with Marc Jacobs Heaven in 2023, and now with London-based label Chopova Lowena. That most recent collaboration includes a peek-a-boo T-shirt with the Climax x Chopova Lowena girl lifting her skirt, chunky charm necklaces, and Chopova’s first underwear set, which is in pink mesh and covered in the words ‘Chopova loves Climax’.
It is also a growing publishing house. Climax published its first book last year, an archival body of work called Pissing Women by Sophy Rickett, which features photographs of the artist’s female friends dressed in officewear peeing on London streets. Next up is a 600-page tome that looks back at ten years of Martine Syms’ photographic archive, which will be followed by Queer Dyke Cruising, a series of images shot in the 1980s by Del LaGrace Volcano at Hampstead Heath, London.
And of course, Climax is now a New York store. For Burley, this new outpost offers something very different from its London sister. ‘I see London more as an HQ shop, where people come and shop from our office,’ she says. ‘With the New York space, we wanted to take the codes we developed with Climax – the pink, the visual direction – and turn that into a real storefront, a real flagship store experience that London is not ever going to be and I don't want it to be.’
But like its forebear, the New York Climax will function as a kind of research library for the creatives who frequently pass through its doors. ‘The best thing [about Climax] is that I have so many friends who are photographers, stylists or creative directors, and it's really fun for them to say to me, “Oh, I'm shooting this person”, and I can say, “Have you seen this book?” It feels nice to offer some sort of small reference point, and then you see the shoot or the issue come out, and know where those influences came from.’
The shop is designed by Kat Milne and is an interesting experiment in material that plays off of the ‘sexy’ and ‘angry’ aspects of the Climax identity. There are stainless steel shelves and mirrors around the shop, which give it a modern, clean and minimal look, but then there are also benches with milky latex cushions and hidden drawers stocked with treasures like rare Kathy Acker editions or vintage issues of i-D. ‘Making the latex milky was making it more like a whisper,’ Milne says. ‘You want to lean in, to be intrigued, as opposed to something that is loud, in your face and obvious from the jump, and the same is true of the drawers under the display cabinet. It’s all about having these little reveals throughout the space in some way.’ Like everything Climax, it is done with a wink.
Climax Books, 56 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003.
