Between these, a casual “Bag Bar,” complete with stools, allows customers to sit and relax while they select purses from backlit moving display boxes. Across the way, in a small boutique with a similarly round footprint, rows of sunglasses are reflected in a palpitating dichroic-glass ceiling. Here, a circular costume-jewelry shop features playful LV-branded space-age mobiles and a sculpture, titled Kiki, by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami - one of a collection of art pieces installed throughout the store. Darker timbers line the walls of glamorous rooms at the back where fine jewelry and watches are displayed amid satiny surfaces of French lacquer veneer.ĭown a few steps, the tone is lighter both chromatically and atmospherically. Marino divided the ground floor into rooms dedicated to leather goods and accessories, covering a central cashier desk with a light Aniegre-wood-veneer canopy. Opposite, a limestone-clad inner structural skin, punctuated by openings to bring in daylight, encloses much of the actual sales area to create a more intimate experience. Like a gilded cage, the glittering volume features window walls lined with a curtain of flower-patterned stainless-steel mesh and a mirrored ceiling that expands the space infinitely upward. This overpass spans a full-height void sliced by the shop’s main vertical thoroughfare - a “bling” stair with treads composed of limestone and glass strips animated by color-changing LEDs and media streams. To reach the “maison” from the entry, they must cross a bridge clad with stalattite stone, meant to be a camp reference to a drawbridge. Inside, well-heeled patrons are treated to a grand double-height atrium with gold titanium-plated shelves displaying the company’s signature luggage. A city ordinance prohibited going above that. Outside, he integrated them at the street level by resurfacing the facade with a blindingly white portland stone. To create the London Louis Vuitton Maison - conceived as the home of a collector - Marino and his design team gutted and unified two buildings, one Georgian and the other vaguely Art Deco. The environment necessary to attract this clientele must evoke the brand’s version of luxury, relate to the city (or at least a posh version of it), and to the structure. “These are exceedingly well-off customers,” says the architect, who has been working with the client since 1996. Even the “wave of new money from Asia and the Middle East comes to London,” says Marino.īuilding for such elite consumers comes with responsibilities. press that, despite the ailing British economy, when consumers want an expensive handbag, they buy it in London. “We all thought that with the recession it would crack, but it never stops.” This comment is supported by recent reports in the U.K. “New Bond Street is the most high-end shopping street in the world,” explains New York City-based Peter Marino, the project’s architect. But the new store, with 16,146 square feet of retail space, is intended to be unique. Wherever these tourists come from, you can bet there is a Louis Vuitton (LV) closer than London.
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