In season six of Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw famously declared the scrunchie dead in the water. "No woman who works at W Magazine and lives on Perry Street would be caught dead at a hip, downtown restaurant wearing a scrunchie,” she tells her deadbeat boyfriend Berger in a fit of rage. Bradshaw might have been right in 2003, but 20 years on, she couldn’t be more wrong.
In London these days, one in every three women you pass on the street has her hair pulled back, meticulously parted into a low bun, and held together by a scrunchie so big it could give a Victorian ruff a run for its money. The chief proprietor of these supersized scrunchies? Good Squish, a Hackney-based accessories brand that has won the hearts and hair of Londoners from Heathrow to Hainault and back again.
“I started making them during lockdown and gave them to my friends, it was just a side thing,” says Billie Cronin, the founder of Good Squish. As Good Squish quickly gained popularity, Cronin ran the business out of her living room with the help of her boyfriend’s (now-exes’) mum, who became her seamstress, while Billie utilised her bathtub to dye all of the material. Now Cronin has nine employees, an office, and the side hustle has very much become her sole focus.
Good Squish’s rapid ascension was helped out by a series of famous fans repping the brand. First came Chloë Sevigny, then Maude Apatow, then Helena Bonham Carter. They’ve done collaborations with Olivia Dean, and Marisa Abela was spotted rocking one during the promo for Back to Black. Cronin is also (helpfully) good friends with the actress Bel Powley, and recently provided custom scrunchies and hair clips for Powley’s ultra-chic wedding celebrations.
The supersized scrunchie obsession quickly filtered down to the streets of London and now when Cronin leaves her studios in Hackney, she says she sees Squishes (as she calls them) all around the local area. “It’s so nice to see people wearing them,” she says, “we do see a lot of them!” This checks out - Good Squish’s ground zero appears to be Columbia Road flower market, where the reems of colourful flowers suddenly have a stylish new competitor to be worried about.
Kristy, a self-certified Good Squish obsessive, owns three Squishes already and is already planning on buying more. “They’re camp and they’re fun,” she says. “From a style perspective, I love how they’re so striking. They really jazz up even the most boring outfit - you can be wearing the slouchiest t-shirt and jeans, then you put a Good Squish on and you can feel like the outfit is done in an instant.”
Last week, their ubiquity even became a meme. “If you see this in your neighbourhood, just know the rent is about to double and a natural wine bar/pilates studio is coming to a street near you,” a tweet read alongside a picture of a Good Squish-esque scrunchie. This barb is perhaps partially fuelled by the prices of Good Squish scrunchies, which range from £22 to £90.
But that’s the price of sustainability. All Good Squish scrunchies are made in London with primarily deadstock fabric, and the brand has a “Fix Your Squish” initiative to repair any broken Squishes, so each scrunchie can stay with you for life. Good Squish also developed a special charity scrunchie for Palestine in the colour of its flag, with 100 per cent of the profits going to Medical Aid for Palestinians.
Billie believes the Good Squish community is key to her success, and they understand that the prices of their cult scrunchies are about more than just hype. “A lot of care goes into the development of our products,” she says. “We have a really great community who have bought from us from the beginning, and they still buy from us now.”
The interest in Good Squish is so big, in fact, that it’s expanding out of London to Seoul and Japan this year. If the streets of our city are any indication, the Good Squishification of London may well be about to go worldwide.
