An Ode to Psyche - Telegraph Gareth Wyn Davies says happy birthday to the North East designer department store Psyche. Following on from my last post, An Ode to Autumn , I am proud to be able to bring you An Ode to Psyche. Who knows where this Keats-meets-men's fashion theme may land us: The Eve of St Agnès B, perhaps? The Psyche here is a groovy North East concept/department store, the against-the-odds genesis of which reads a bit like The Paradise , except that the setting at the very start was recession-hit early 1980s Redcar, and the thrusting, self-made owner Steve Cochrane, an engineering graduate, sometime punk-band singer and Northern soul fan. Now, if simultaneously being into both punk and Northern soul was unlikely (not to say dangerous, given just how feudal the whole music scene was back then), taking a tiny shop selling homemade punk outfits and turning it into a full-blown designer store selling everything from Alexander McQueen to William Hunt should have been almost impossible. Should have been, but somehow wasn't ultimately. "The shop at the beginning was smaller than our changing-rooms are now," says Cochrane, who is 53 and married with two sons of 13 and five. The exterior of the Psyche store in the centre of Middlesbrough. Mind you, there were times along the way when he himself seriously questioned what he had got himself into. Like when he bought 35,000 sq ft of "nana-ish" department store, Uptons, in the centre of Middlesbrough, hitherto best known for selling Dannimacs and the like, only to discover that it was riddled with asbestos. It took him a good seven years to put it right and make the figures work. But now, at the tail end of another recession, business there (and online) is booming, and Psyche is celebrating its 30th anniversary of trading. "We're bigger than Harvey Nichols in Leeds," says Cochrane proudly. W'e're constantly changing and evolving. We're creating something with the attention to detail and idiosyncrasy of an independent boutique, but on the scale of a department store. Customers flock from all over the North, and online orders come from as far afield as Russia, Armani, Paul Smith and Hugo Boss being particularly popular among the dapper Dans of northern England, according to Cochrane. Being a dedicated follower of fashion himself, he has a wardrobe every bit as well stocked as the store, taking in lots of Dries van Noten, sundry pieces by Jil Sander and - his proudest possession, even though it no longer fits him - a Costume National Homme dark-brown ponyskin suit with high collars and gauntlet cuffs. It's 20 years old, so almost the same vintage as Psyche, but not quite. Cochrane is marking the anniversary (of the business, not the Costume National suit) by opening a dedicated Armani shop next to the main store. And by 2016 he plans to open a 75-bedroom four or five-star hotel next door. I don't for one minute doubt he'll pull it off. psyche.co.uk