Tried & Tested: Koko Coffee & Design Amsterdam By Petite Passport

Most striking feature:

The two enthusiastic owners. They both worked in a famous fashion temple in Den Bosch, but both wanted one thing: have their own shop. When they moved to Amsterdam, they decided to open a shop where you can also order good (Caffenation from Belgium) coffee and a slice of banana cake. In a time like this it isn’t easy to get a loan for such an idea, so they started a crowdsourcing project and organized an auction to get the money together. One chair was auctioned as ‘have your own chair at Koko’. So there is a sign above a beautiful vintage chair saying ‘private for Tibor Verseveld’ and he can always come in and have it’s own chair. I tell this story because it gives you an idea how passionate the two girls of Koko are.

Apart from the coffee and the banana cake, you can also shop till you drop. They sell new fashion labels by young designers. To give them a chance to show their work. For example of Monique Poolmans. Not only from The Netherlands though, they are the only shop selling pieces of Ivana Helsinkiand Samuji. I was intrigued by the tables they are also selling – from a Dutch company called Fraaiheid. In a crisis time like this you don’t want to spill material, they think. So the tables are made out of one piece of wood. And you don’t need screws, you easily build the table together. They aren’t that expensive either. There are magazines and papers lying around. On the walls they exhibit work of upcoming photographers – and at the end of the year they will show work of a young photographer from Texel who is already in Neon magazine.

Koko is located in the middle of de Wallen (the Red Light District), also close toHotel Droog. Definitely worth going next time you’re in Amsterdam!

Thanks Tanne for letting me know about Koko!