Illovo strikes it lucky

WORDS Michelle Marais PHOTOS Letitia Lerm

Michelle Marais chats to the Desmond and the Tutus frontman, Shane Durrant, about his new noodle bar’s offbeat decor and his recipe for success. Illovo is certainly all the richer for the Good Luck Club and Wolves.

Once seen as the unpopular stepbrother of Jozi’s suburbs, Illovo has been lately seen  various trendy spaces opening their doors. One of these, the Good Luck Club, is run by a couple who believe in having fun while making more fun stuff for people to do.

Shane and Angie Durrant are no strangers to the area. They’ve been the owners of Wolves – a marvelous little coffee shop renowned for its red velvet cake – for quite a number of years. Recently, the Desmond and the Tutus frontman and his missus purchased the space next door and transformed it into a quirky noodle bar.

Michelle: Illovo has proven itself to be quite the popular little suburb in the past few years. Did you predict this prior to putting up shop?

Shane: We moved in just as things started to pick up for Illovo. So many young creative people live in the area so it always seemed a shame that there wasn’t more of a pavement culture for everyone to enjoy. I always thought it was just a matter of time – we just needed the right people to start doing the right things.

Both Wolves and the Good Luck Club are very unique. How do you go about deciding on the interior of a shop or eatery?

Angie and I both come from an ad agency background where we were constantly coming up with ideas for other people. Part of the job was knowing that your ideas will be watered down or rejected for being too “out there”. Now that we are our own clients we get to make those calls. So if we decide we want to design our own wallpaper featuring a repeat pattern of a cat in a top hat then we do it, or if we want to have a giant cat head outside, instead of a sign with our logo, then we do it. So it’s a combination of what the space needs and some weird ideas we thought would be fun.

What made you decide to work with Nicholas Christowitz on creating the corporate identity for the Good Luck Club and how do you feel about the result?

Nic is a good friend of ours and a fantastic young designer. Angie and Nic do a fair amount of work together so it seemed like a no-brainer for him to be involved. Being the creative control-freaks that Angie and I are, we were very hands-on in the development of the CI, often leaning over Nic’s laptop from either side saying things like “oh just give me the mouse” or “bigger, bigger, little to the left”. End of the day, we came up with a very cool logo that is everything we needed it to be – whimsical, light-hearted and a little bit Japanese.

When sourcing design elements, trinkets and furniture, how important is it to stay true to one’s taste vs go about incorporating trends?

We like a combination of the two but I feel it’s most important to honour your gut feel. We also love involving our friends, for example our tables are by Pedersen & Lennard, which is my cousin’s furniture design company.

It’s inspiring to see two young people be successful in their endeavours. What would you say is the Durrant recipe for success?

Shane: When we opened Wolves we really had very little idea of what we were doing, but we knew that we were doing it for fun. We wanted to create a relaxed space for the Illovo community; a community centre of sorts. So at the heart of everything we do is this philosophy: to make more fun stuff for people to do and have fun while we’re doing it.

The Good Luck Club is situated at 3 Corlett Drive, Illovo, Johannesburg. They’re open for lunch and dinner from Tuesdays to Saturdays and only for lunch on Sundays. Reservations are recommended. Contact them at 011 447 3816, hi@thegoodluckclub.co.za, thegoodluckclub.co.za