Client: Saint Laurent
Design: Hedi Slimane
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Size: 900 sq m
Completion time: Ongoing
With the rise of online shopping, luxury clothes brands such as Saint Laurent (previously known as Yves Saint Laurent) are finding that the design of their shops – indeed the entire retail experience they offer – is more important than ever to get right.
With this in mind French fashion designer and creative director of Saint Laurent Hedi Slimane decided that the design of the brand’s stores was too important a job to trust to anyone else, and took on the role himself – well, with a little help from the company’s in-house design team. An emphasis on rich, sumptuous materials evokes the quality and understated style that is synonymous with Saint Laurent, as does Slimane’s preference for simplicity over elaborate decoration.
For the store concept, which has been trialled in Paris and New York before being rolled out to other stores, including the London flagship (due next year), Slimane was inspired by the works and philosophies of the Union des Artistes Modernes (UAM), a leading French modernist movement that reacted against the decorative, traditional objet of the past – anything, as they saw it, ‘inherited from grandmother’.
There’s certainly nothing chintzy or granny-like here: the predominantly finest noir soie and blanc statuaire marble. There is silver and gold, too, in Thirties’ mirrored vitrines with nickel-plated and mirror-polished brass. These gleaming surfaces contrast with walls and floors of minimalist concrete.
Contrasts in mood and atmosphere are created through the use of dark, quilted-leather upholstery paired with sparkling glass and mirrors, while suspended bars in nickel-plated brass and minimalist marble display podiums form elegant counterpoints to the flat surfaces. Decoration is kept to a minimum, with the only pattern coming from the veining of the marble.
The precise mathematical repetition of the clean vertical and horizontal lines of display cases, shelves and strip lighting adds a dramatic visual rhythm to the space, while fine craftsmanship is clearly evident throughout.
The bold, architectural approach is superbly detailed in its execution, yet subtle in its expression. Articulated in the language of what may be seen as a modern, 21st-century art deco.
