Michael Gabellini, principal of New York-based Gabellini Sheppard Associates, worked with architect Suzan Tillotson of Tillotson Design Associates, to design the store based at Soho. The 2,000 square feet retail store that opened in November 2008, features a painted illumination, accentuated with architecture that highlights the delicate, occasionally transparent fabrics of the designer.
The shop exhibits ready-to-wear collections of the designer, beauty products, eyewear, shoes, handbags, and home products. It is located in vintage masonry structure with residential floors above.
The architects worked to overcome the ceiling’s pronounced front-to-back drop, which drops from 23 feet at the sidewalk level, to eight feet in the windowless rear salon. The shop’s interiors make the objects displayed look like they are floating on air, and are applied by brush strokes with a white canvas background.
With stairs in the middle of the store leading to the rear merchandise, Gabellini created a daylight infused area. The mannequins were treated as sculpture, suspended from ceiling slots, perched on the staircase, or standing on platforms outlined against the white-painted walls.
The extended ceiling was used by Tillotson to house pairs of multi-circuit tracks for controlling and hanging motorized theatrical equipments from 100W architectural AR111 spotlights.
T5 lamps provide fluorescent backlighting to the Corian staircase and the translucent acrylic display platforms. Fluorescent and color-changing LED lights beneath translucent resin form the four-inch deep perimeter floor. Color changing LED grazer lights were also incorporated in the main salon walls.
Concealed fluorescent cove and track-mounted MR16 fixtures illuminate the rear salon, back and side walls. The floor trough resonates the projected blue of the wall, which further emphasizes the space within the store. Soft pastel hues and color changing options ranging to minimum eight are used to blend with the fabrics and designs.
The designer carries out studies on models of the space to prevent the illumination from spreading on to the translucent display shelving and walls, and rather illuminates the merchandise displayed on the shelves.
The low-voltage MR16 accent lights in clusters of four can be rearranged when product display groupings are changed, while the lighting can be programmed to conjure up a range of ambient environments with theatrical lighting, from daylight to moonlight.
