Latest articles on Stores by The Cool Hunter - for more checkout www.thecoolhunter.net http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:17:10 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au Latest articles on Stores by The Cool Hunter - for more checkout www.thecoolhunter.net http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1435&Itemid=52 VilaSofa, a furniture store that opened in Amsterdam in October is a clever design feat by Tjep (http://www.tjep.com). Judging by the VilaSofa (http://www.vilasofa.nl/) website, it is a brand that can use some visual updating. VilaSofa is positioned somewhere between an IKEA store and a conventional furniture store and its claim to fame is reasonable prices and a guaranteed 48-hour delivery of all displayed models. The Amsterdam-based Tjep faced the challenge of making all this look cool. It zeroed in on the warehouse concept but with a homey twist. It focused on the aspects of speed and the transitional nature of the place where factory-born furniture lives while waiting to be taken to your home. Combining warehouse and home isn’t easy, but Tjep accomplished it by only suggesting both. They used warehousing and transportation symbols as the basis for gigantic cutouts and wall graphics, and created a white wall with cutouts of chandeliers, windows and ornate balconies that imply a villa and refer to your home as your castle. Staff rides around in cute cash-register trolleys so that customers don’t need to go to them. The Tjep design team included company founders Frank Tjepkema and Janneke Hooymans, plus Leonie Janssen, Tina Stieger, Bertrand Gravier and Camille Cortet. Tjep is a multiple-award winning firm that works in an astonishingly wide variety of three-dimensional design — Product and furniture design, interior design and interior architecture, identity design and events. Tjep clients include Droog, British Airways, ING, Restaurant Praq, Camper, Heineken and Ikea. Hooymans left Tjep in May 2008, and now works independently thisisjane.com. (http://www.tjep.com)- Tuija Seipell. Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:16:54 +0100 http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1431&Itemid=52 Aesop (http://www.aesop.net.au/) continues to serve up award winning design with its new store in "The Strand Arcade" in Sydney. Each Aesop store (http://www.thecoolhunter.net/stores/) has its own signature look defying the carbon copy stores that were so popular in the 90's and early 2000's. Respecting the store's neighbouring environment is important to Aesop and integration within the area is emphasised. March Studio's, (http://marchstudio.com.au/) Rodney Eggleston has again been offered the role to find the "store's soul" and bring it to life. He has made one of Aesop's highlight materials "Porcelain" the hero in this store by using the timeless, precious material for the tiles, small furnishings and floor. As always with Aesop, clean lines and only the necessary pieces of furniture and interiors are used allowing optimum space and movement. The complete range of skin, hair and body products are available in this store, so maximising the wall space was essential. The finishing results are a sublime gallery like offering that continues to push the retail boundaries. – Kate Vandermeer. Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:15:00 +0100 http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1385&Itemid=52 Aesop continue to deliver outstanding, intelligent and considered design in not only their product but with their individual approach (http://www.thecoolhunter.net/stores/Aesops-Glass-Bottle-Store---Adelaide/) to each retail concept (http://www.thecoolhunter.net/stores/AESOP----Skin-Care-That-Thinks-Outside-The-Box/) store they launch. Their latest offering in Zurich embodies this philosophy perfectly. Utilising a long, narrow space to advantage, the focal point of the store is located in the centre of the space allowing consumers to walk around and interact with the products which are located on a series of suspended shelves. There’s a sense of weightlessness and room to breathe due to the fact that the shelves don’t make contact with the ground and only the necessary products and shelving is featured. The repetition of the shelves seem to co-exist with ease but not at the peril of functionality. Using Aesop’s signature store sensibilities of incorporating water, merging modernity and recycled materials and not “over-designing” or adding unnecessary objects, this Zurich store is no exception. – Kate Vandermeer. Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:53:36 +0100 http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1332&Itemid=52 It is risky to try to express luxury for an 18-28-year-old, wealthy male audience — and not turn them totally off. Rafael de Cardenas of New York’s Architecture at Large (http://www.architectureatlarge.com/) took on this challenge with the rebuilding of Ubiq Philadelphia, the destination of choice for sneakerheads from far and wide.As sneakers and streetwear do not lend themselves all that well to wine-colored velvet or chandeliers, de Cardenas approached the redesign of the large store with a cold and bold, simplified black-and-white palette. Hard, black-lacquered surfaces, op-inspired patterns, harsh lighting and simplified displays mix with beautiful detailing and white ceilings and floors.Thrown into the mix is a posh back room, where streetwear is displayed in a traditional gentlemen’s tailor room complete with dark-wood panels, antique furnishings, restored Victorian plasterwork and a magnificent, restored mahogany fireplace. It is all a nice fusion of mansion and showroom, inviting and cold, pared-down and rich. With his approach, de Cardenas has managed to teeter in the wobbly middle-space between the reassuring ‘you can tell this is expensive, can’t you?’ and the nonchalant ‘I don’t really care.’The entire store is up about a meter from street level, so you can be assured that you are seen, day or night, on display, shopping for your latest pair of Clae, Stussy Deluxe, Vans Vault, Original Fake, UMBRO by Kim Jones and many others. Apparently, rap artist Kanye West has shopped there, so it should be good to go for the rest. By Tuija Seipell Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:05:47 +0100 http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1303&Itemid=52 After becoming one of the world's hottest boutique botanical skincare ranges, the Australian-based Aesop (http://www.aesop.net.au/) brand is now making a name for itself in the world of innovative retail design, injecting a large dose of cool into the concept of sustainability. If you thought the brand's Melbourne "cardboard" concept store (stores/AESOP----Skin-Care-That-Thinks-Outside-The-Box/) was clever (all of the merchandising stands were made from recycled cardboard), you'll love its brand new Adelaide "bottle" boutique. The store's ceiling is crafted entirely out of recycled bottles, precisely arranged in a wave pattern. Who said green had to be dowdy? These new Australian stores are part of a big phase of expansion for Aesop, which has also just opened boutiques in Paris and London's swanky Mayfair. By Lisa Evans Thu, 22 May 2008 11:32:19 +0100 http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1297&Itemid=52 If you were led to a department store’s make-up and perfume floor blindfolded, would you know where you are when the blindfold came off? What store, what city, what country? Probably not, as one looks just like the other. Unimaginative, predictable, boring. Not so at Berlin’s 100-plus year-old Kaufhaus des Westens, one singular store known by Berliners as KaDeWe (http://www.kadewe-berlin.de/). Specializing in luxury, style and indulgence, KaDeWe has never shied away from swanky design or striking displays. This time, they’ve allowed Hamburg-based Bilen Born GbR (http://www.bilenundborn.de/) to create two radically different areas on the ground-floor perfume department. One is a white space-agey multi-label area inspired by the act of breathing in fragrances, where spirals and rounded shapes draw the visitor in. The other is a baroque-inspired space with a contemporary twist. With its glass mosaic floor, studded pillars and ceiling with more than 8,000 Swarovski crystals, these surroundings are memorable even if the brands are the same as everywhere else. By Tuija Seipell Wed, 14 May 2008 09:59:38 +0100 http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1253&Itemid=52 Since being established by Dennis Pahitis twenty years ago, Aésop (http://www.aesop.net.au) skin care has become an uncontested success story in the notoriously fickle beauty industry – focused on providing its worldwide clientele with the highest quality botanical skin care, rather than subscribing to mainstream-cosmetic anti-aging hype. Aésop now have 78 international stockists, plus 20 signature stores including stores in Paris, London, Sydney and their most recent Melbourne addition, Flinders Lane. In keeping with Aésop tradition – that every store is different; conceived and designed individually so as that each store is a reflection and celebration of its location – the Flinders Lane store does not disappoint, providing its customers with a design and infrastructure that is just as alternative as Aésop’s skin care products. Located in one of Melbourne’s most interesting precincts, the Flinders Lane store interior is made entirely of industrial-grade cardboard; from the display shelving, to the massive eastern façade, and even the counter tops– proving that cardboard can be both striking and structurally sturdy if it’s engineered well. Designed by local interior architects Rodney Eggleston and Anne-Laure Cavigneaux of March Studios (http://marchstudio.com.au/), the ambient new store has drawn attention from all sorts of passers by. Store manager, Kate, says she wasn’t expecting how amazed customers would be by the store’s design. “It’s clear it’s a very tactile environment. Most people come in and tend to want to touch it all.” The Flinders Lane store is located at Shop 1C, 268 Flinders Lane, Melbourne. For a full list of Aésop products and stockists visit www.aesop.net.au (http://www.aesop.net.au). By Anna Byrne. Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:35:44 +0100 http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1243&Itemid=52 Alexandre Herchcovitch (http://herchcovitch.uol.com.br/) has come a long way since his humble beginnings of making his mother's party clothes. Having launched his first collection in 1994, things have only gotten bigger for the Brazilian-born designer. Trained at the Catholic institution Santa Marcelina College of Arts in Sao Paulo, his designs have been sent down the runways of New York, Paris and London. Best known for avant-garde designs and eclectic prints, his trademark skulls became an icon of Brazilian youth in the nineties. 2007 was a memorable year for Herchcovitch. It was a year of branching out, particularly with his redesign of the uniform for McDonald's employees in Brazil, and the opening of his first store abroad. In this daring project, Herchcovitch chose Tokyo where a good part of his collections are purchased and where he has become somewhat of a fashion guru. The 1,076sq ft store, which sits in the hip Daikanyama district carries his men's, women's and denim collections and is operated in partnership with Japanese fashion distributor and retailer H.P. France. Changing the way the world thinks about Brazilian fashion, coupled with his new Japanese store and concessions in New York, Herchcovitch is fast becoming a big and serious name in the fashion world. By Brendan McKnight. Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:23:07 +0100 http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1240&Itemid=52 Fiat has opened ew London flagship showroom and it is well worth the visit even if you have no desire to purchase one of the swanky new 500's. The Marylebone store features a heavily chromed interior (look out for the exhaust pipe clad columns) and is fresh and modern without being intimidating or overbearing – think Austin Powers love den meets the science lab of the future. The space is split over two floors. The first floor is the showroom with a handful of vehicles, a whole lot of shag pile carpet and a gift shop to boot. Here you can purchase pretty much anything for the Fiat enthusiast from cufflinks to handbags to miniature models that open up to become USB sticks. Yep, Team Fiat has thought of everything. Downstairs is a more minimalist white multi function space designed for corporate meetings, fashion shows and art and design exhibitions. This space currently features the 'Fiat Workpop 500' exhibition where prototypes of Fiat accessories that have been designed by 22 young product designers are on display. The public can vote for its favourites, and in a Survivor like contest, the winner's product will go into mass production and eventually on general sale. Where will you be able to purchase these you may be asking? In the gift shop of course. By Brendan McKnight Wed, 19 Mar 2008 06:25:23 +0100 http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1180&Itemid=52 The much awaited, fabulous, 6,000 square-foot M.A.C Pro (http://www.macpro.com/templates/whatsnew/proflagship.tmpl) space has just opened in New York. Occupying an entire floor at 7 West 22nd Street, the new facility is divided into two separate sections, each with its own entrance: A retail/studio and a training area. Unlike other M.A.C Pro stores around the world, this is a full-blown studio and experimentation facility for make-up artists and beauty professionals. With its dramatic open layout, the space is a true feast for the eyes. M.A.C Pro’s New York store is completely dedicated to serving the pros. At the mixing station, they can hone their skills, test samples and experiment with the product with all of the tools of the trade nearby. The reference library is stocked with books, magazines and other reference materials for those who want to learn more or do research. At the photography studio, they can record their processes and their results. A separate training area, a kitchenette and bathrooms with showers make this an ideal space for some serious learning. Makeup Art Cosmetics (M·A·C) launched in 1984 when two Canadians, makeup artist and photographer Frank Toskan and beauty salon owner Frank Angelo, opened a single counter in the basement of the now-defunct Simpson’s department store in Toronto. Staffed by professional make-up artists, determined to become the ultimate color authority in make-up, and blessed with an outrageous sense of drama and theatre, M.A.C gained huge popularity among professionals and consumers. The Estee Lauder Companies bought 51 per cent of M.A.C in 1995 and the rest of the shares in 1998. Sleek stores, a vast array of color options, and a sense of professionalism and artistry are still the hallmarks of M.A.C that now has more than 750 stores in 50 countries. By Tuija Seipell. Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:06:03 +0100