From seven major brand cases, we can see the latest luxury store design concepts

An aesthetic war is unfolding between major luxury brand stores, which are striving to attract consumers with more artistic retail spaces. The secret weapon in this war is a group of architects and creative people who have changed not only where we shop but also how we shop.

The following are the latest store cases of several major luxury brands summarized by the Financial Times:

The boundaries between art and retail are becoming increasingly blurred

Prada

Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and Prada design director Miuccia Prada (pictured below) are one of the most famous store design partners.

Ten years ago, the two collaborated to launch the Prada store in New York City’s SoHo district (below), a magnificent building with a streamlined staircase, models arranged in an unconventional way, and historical pieces displayed in glass handbag display cabinets. This store changed people’s perception of stores and set a new standard for brand stores.

Since then, Prada stores have been built to the same aesthetic as galleries: Miuccia Prada recently invited film and television costume designers to decorate the main flagship stores in London, Paris and Milan in the Iconoclast project, which might fool regular customers into thinking they were walking into a museum. With Koolhaas’s plans to design a monolithic sculpture for Milan’s Fondazione Prada, we can expect the line between art space and retail space to blur.

Comme des Garçons

Today, on most of the world’s most upscale shopping streets, galleries and fashion brands are more intimate. When Comme des Garçons opened its multi-brand boutique Dover Street Market in London 10 years ago, Dover Street was known for independent galleries and casual lunch spots. Now, these galleries and lunch spots coexist with brand stores, including Victoria Beckham, Acne, John Rochas and Vanessa Bruno, making Dover Street London’s most vibrant retail space. Now, forward-thinking Dover Street Market plans to move into  Burberry  ‘s former headquarters in Haymarket.

Comme des Garçons founder Rei Kawakubo calls her approach to store changes “beautiful chaos,” and she regularly places art installations in stores and rotates them between stores. Her New York store, formerly a school, is 20,000 square feet (about 1,900 square meters) and has seven floors, which consumers can explore in a large transparent elevator that connects the entire building. Store design styles tend to be minimalist.

In the popular trend of store design, there is more refreshing style than creative chaos, minimalism rather than cumbersome comprehensiveness.

Saint Laurent’s 

new Saint Laurent stores launched worldwide replaced the original Tom Ford-designed black stores with mahogany cabinets. Artistic director Hedi Slimane used words like “peaceful and tranquil” to describe the stores he designed. The store design is extremely minimalist: steel grids stand along the ground and shoes are displayed on the wall.

Victoria Beckham

Victoria Beckham opened its first global flagship store in London last year. The store was designed by architect Farshid Moussavi, who focused on the display of goods. The store is like a blank canvas, and consumers are attracted to the carefully selected and matched goods.

Céline

In the past few years, Céline’s new and renovated stores have also adopted this gallery-style layout: the flagship store on Mount Street in London and another store in SoHo, New York. The 600-square-meter flagship store uses simple gray walls, shoes and bags are displayed on the walls like works of art, and the marble inlaid with semi-precious stones and the floor with inlaid wood effect give a strong visual impact.

Céline artistic director Phoebe Philo commissioned Danish artist Thomas Poulsen to design the furnishings of the Mount Street flagship store, and the daybed and floor lamp are called “hidden artistic language”. “The first thing you touch when you enter the store (the exterior door handle) is carefully carved, and the last thing (the interior door handle) is very simple. I hope that consumers can experience a transition from complexity to simplicity in the store.” Phoebe Philo said, in other words, it is like entering a gallery and leaving with a shopping bag. For Poulsen, this also makes his work more dynamic, a combination of architecture and design, just like the spirit of Bauhaus.

Christopher Kane

‘s architect John Pawson, who has just completed the design of the Mount Street store for Christopher Kane, is a believer in minimalism. He said: “Art space is not to place magnificent architectural sculptures. People don’t want to be distracted or even realize that they are there. Everything in a fashion brand store should revolve around clothing. The architectural style can provide a certain timeless atmosphere, but the emotional resonance generated in the store depends on the way the space is displayed and displayed.”

As consumers increasingly shop online, why has the importance of store design become more important? At the newly renovated

Hermès

store on Bond Street, a curvaceous staircase leads customers to an outdoor courtyard with a Henry Moore sculpture. Perhaps this is proof that the ultimate communication of luxury goods today is through physical space.

Alison Cardy, managing director of global design consultancy HMKM, whose clients include Burberry and Harvey Nichols, said: “Stores have become places to enhance the brand experience. Consumers don’t just want to shop, they want brands to understand them. Stores have become the best place to showcase brand identity and provide offline experiences.

Perhaps in the future, the boundaries between galleries and stores will disappear completely.