Consumer cultureWith world-class architects on board, London’s fashion flagships are not so much purveyors of a retail fix as shrines to contemporary design, says Lucie Green

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L ondon is witnessing an explosion in architecture and design. Superstar architects, conceptual art pieces, cool curators and interactive installations are springing up as far as the

eye can see. But you won’t find them in galleries, museums or public building projects. Instead, they’re to be found in our retail spaces.

Welcome to the new world of shopping, where a flagship is nothing without a directional design, groundbreaking architectural scheme or curated exhibition space. High-end labels, keen to align themselves with the cultured tastes and hobbies of their target audience, are investing millions in creating lavish design landmarks. Even high street labels are upping the ante with multi-million-pound flagship temples to their brands. This autumn, upscale US label Anthropologie is set to launch two stores on King’s Road and Regent Street, both designed as vast lounge emporiums to

Anthropologie’s lifestyle offerings of clothes, shoes, bags, jewellery and homeware by head buyer Keith Johnson, who scours the globe for unusual trinkets and furniture. Soon after global architect extraordinaire Peter Marino (known for his work with Chanel, Dior and Fendi), is set to unveil his lavish reimagining of the Louis Vuitton store on Bond Street.

They join a host of recent extravagant launches. This summer Lanvin opened its second flagship in London, designed by féted architectural talents Pierre Beucler and Jean-Christophe Poggioli. (They were hired for Liberty of London’s lavish Sloane Street branch, Dior Hommes in Tokyo and Comme des Garçons and Cacharel in Paris. The list goes on.) Earlier this year hip Australian beauty brand Aesop launched its second boutique in Notting Hill. The company’s cult following has as much to do with its design and its stores as its products; the Notting Hill opening was overseen by Aesop’s head honcho, design-savvy Dennis Paphitis. ‘To make the most interesting

use of each space, we collaborate with talented designers and architects,’ explains the company, which has refashioned a car park driveway into a store format before. In another unit it used thousands of glass bottles to create a gigantic, waved, amber ceiling.

Balenciaga has also been a forerunner in sleek store formats. Its Mount Street store launched late last year and was designed in collaboration with French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and lighting designer Benoit Lalloz. It’s a space-age extravaganza with an interactive musical light shard forest, padded space-capsule fitting rooms and central Balenciaga pod.

‘We have totally moved on from the idea of stores being just about retail,’ explains trends predictor Martin Raymond, co-founder of The Future Laboratory. ‘They have to be more than just a box with shelves. There’s been a big shift at the luxury end of the market particularly. Stores are moving away from an emphasis on commerce, to an emphasis on culture. In the 1990s it was all about celebrity. For

the next five years it will be all about design and architecture.’

Luxury goods producers ‘want to create a “brand universe” for the consumer’, agrees luxury consultant Ilaria Alber-Glanstaetten, CEO of Provenance (part of M&C Saatchi). ‘Brands want to bring stores to life so they aren’t just purveyors of goods. It’s an experience. You have to make a store go beyond fashion.’

London is just the tip of a widespread global trend. Fashion brands across the board are commissioning mega flagships from internationally renowned architects; wild, avant-garde and daring buildings and interiors that become destinations and publicity vehicles in there own right. A quick roundup of recent openings reveals a slew of high-profile buildings, including Derek Lam’s first flagship in New York, designed with curved walls made from clear acrylic (the sort used to build large aquariums) dividing the space. The store was designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of Tokyo-based practice

SANAA. And in February, Armani’s 43,000 sq ft, Fifth Avenue flagship, designed by architects Doriana and Massimiliano Fuksas to feature an extraordinary curving, cut out, swirling staircase, introduced the public ‘to the aesthetic excitement of fine contemporary architecture’, according to Armani himself.

Simultaneously, labels are also collaborating on ground-breaking conceptual architecture projects. In spring this year, Louis Vuitton funded a giant public art installation in Hong Kong by artist Richard Prince, who wrapped the Hong Kong Museum of Art entirely in Pulp Fiction novel covers. In September, Vuitton is celebrating its long relationship with architects and artists with the launch of Louis Vuitton: Art, Fashion and Architecture, a luxurious coffee table book that will track all its projects in recent years. (A de luxe edition will also be available, designed by Takashi Murakami.) Featured collaborations will include Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Hans Hemmert, Anouska Hempel, Peter Marino, and Richard Prince.

Prada, meanwhile, hired Rem Koolhaas and his Office for Metropolitan Architecture practice this summer to build its evolving $10 million Transformer event project space in Seoul. The Transformer sits in the grounds of the Gyeongui Palace and is a 160-tonne steel structure covered in a white PVC membrane, which is lit from the inside. The sculpture is lifted and rotated at intervals to create a different shape and interior every time and will house an art exhibition, a movie festival and finally a fashion show.

Last year, Chanel collaborated on a touring building and exhibition with Zaha Hadid. The Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion launched in Hong Kong last year, toured in Tokyo and New York, and contained the work of artists inspired by the brand’s iconic 2.55 Quilted handbag. Each of these projects exemplifies the way fashion brands hope to boost their cultural capital by hitching their wagons to the perennially cool and highbrow worlds of art, architecture and design.

It’s all a far cry from the climate of a decade ago, when store design was a background, the more neutral the better, to the products on offer. ‘Louis Vuitton was the first store architecture innovator,’ explains Alber-Glanstaetten. Prada also set a precedent in 2001 with its stunning Rem Koolhaas New York SoHo flagship. For the first time a store itself became the destination, with the clothing relegated to mere by-product.

Many have followed. ‘Brands are focusing on cutting-edge design because they want to speak to their target, sophisticated consumer in their own language,’ explains Alber-Glanstaetten. ‘By affiliating with art they are also glorifying their fashion. They are placing their product in a design-led space and thereby elevating the product to the status of contemporary art.’

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Indeed, even when the architecture of a store itself is not the focus, brands are hosting exhibitions and art collaborations to publicise their cultural credentials.

In London alone, Prada recently collaborated with mega-stylist Katie Grand on a temporary installation in its Old Bond Street flagship store, part of an international programme that saw Alex White making over its New York shop and Olivier Rizzo and Carine Roitfeld doing the same in Milan and Paris respectively. Mulberry has an extensive programme of art exhibitions at its Bond Street shop, while Paul Smith has an ever-changing gallery space in both his London and Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 stores. Even Banana Republic on Regent Street has artwork curated by gallerist Michael Hoppen.

Where brands are not hyping the ‘high design’ aspect of their stores, they are spending huge volumes of cash to give them landmark destination status.

Collegiate casuals label Abercrombie & Fitch opened in the former Jil Sander building in London in 2007, turning the giant historic building into a nightclub-meets-gym with athletic semi-nude statues and murals on every wall. Queues of teens from across the country

continue to line up round the block at the store nearly two years after it opened. ‘Abercrombie is making it obvious that the nightclub concept for stores works,’ says The Future Laboratory’s Raymond. ‘It isn’t about the clothing, it’s the experience. What’s notable is that parents don’t feel comfortable. It presents a view of adolescents that they are uncomfortable with but that’s what teens like.’

Luxury stores aren’t the only ones commissioning directional buildings, either. New Look’s £2.4m, Oxford Street flagship has also become a beacon in store design. It was conceived by world-renowned architectural practice Future Systems (which is also behind the Selfridges Birmingham store resembling a giant metallic bubble).

With all these changes, the role of the architect has become more and more significant. They are now key in shaping not just the outward appearance and internal structure of buildings, but also in translating the brand image through apparently insignificant fixtures and fittings. As a result, many now have long-term partnerships with labels to create a consistent message.

Stella McCartney, for example, works with APA London Architects on all its stores. ‘Stella is very interested in the materials; we place a lot of emphasis on this in the stores,’ says APA architect Angus Pond, who carries out extensive research to source the correct product, be it bronze veined marble or Japanese ash. ‘But it will always be a collaboration. Store design is different to art because it has to retain a sense

of functionality. You are not trying to usurp the product with your design. You are trying to complement it.’ APA also works with Adidas, M&S and Established & Sons.

Similarly, Marc Jacobs has a long-term relationship with Stephan Jaklitsch Architects,

Armani works regularly with Doriana and Massimiliano Fuksas, and Hermès had a longstanding partnership with the late Rena Dumas.

For Raymond, the impetus behind the trend is simple. ‘Retailers are having to up the ante because of the recession and the growth of

online shopping. Today, anything people can buy online, they will. There’s no debate about people shopping for luxury online now. They do – fact. You need to give them another reason for visiting the shop,’ he says. ‘At the same time those coming to the stores are mainly in their 20s and 30s. They are more design literate and aware of cultural experiences than ever before, so their demands are greater.’

The trend shows no sign of slowing either. ‘You have two options now if you are a brand: choose a star architect, or work with a new artist who completely transforms the retail concept,’ continues Raymond. ‘In London, the Balenciaga and Aesop stores and the New Look flagship were trailblazers. They were the directional examples and quite marginal in the retail landscape. Now, they are the blueprints.’ ■

‘People shop for luxury online now – fact. You need to give them another reason for visiting

the shop’

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