July has been host to a slew of impressive retail and hospitality openings that should be on your radar, whether to inspire your design process for an upcoming project or assist you in planning your stay in major metropolitans around the world. To help you do both, we’ve rounded up eight new hotspots from noted brands such as Dior and Blue Bottle well worth the in-person visit.
[+] PARIS: DIOR CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES FLAGSHIP
While Dior’s historic 30 Avenue Montaigne location undergoes extensive renovations, the French luxury fashion house has opened a three-floor flagship on Champs-Élysées, designed in-house. Signature codes of the original Paris location, like toile de Jouy coverings, curved interior elements and an unmissable façade were reimagined for the new boutique.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Dior
Location 127 Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Paris 75008
[+] TOKYO: BLUE BOTTLE DAIMARU
Within Tokyo’s Daimaru department store, Schemata Architects have created a new post for American coffee company Blue Bottle. The café stand is only for takeaway and merchandise promotion – an ‘industrial product’ rather than a fully developed space. Throughout, the team used warm beige materials like hardboard to create a nostalgic, inviting atmosphere.
Image Credit: Takumi Ota
Location 1 Chome-9-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda City, Tokyo 100-6701
[+] MILAN: SPOTTI, URBAN LIVING MILANO
Italian designer Elena Salmistraro played with Vitra’s Colour & Material Library to create an environment for showroom Spotti Milano’s Home Stories for Spring theme. The interior concept – spanning over four living, dining, study and play areas – meshes Salmistraro’s aesthetic language, Vitra’s iconic home collection products and typical visual references of Milan.
Image Credit: Omar Sartor
Location Viale Piave, 27, Milan 20129
[+] NEW YORK CITY: MAHARISHI
For British clothing brand Maharishi’s first store outside of London, Brooklyn-based Abruzzo Bodziak Architects took design cues from formal Japanese gardens, military supply warehouses and the historic shops of New York City. Leaving the existing space’s façade and ceiling, a grid of olive green wood cabinetry was inserted in the two-level Tribeca shop to create a building-within-a-building contrast.
Image Credit: Naho Kubota
Location 38 Lispenard Street, New York, NY 10013
[+] COPENHAGEN: AXEL ARIGATO FLAGSHIP
Swedish fashion brand Axel Arigato have opened their biggest flagship yet, in the centre of Copenhagen. The gallery-like space, developed by co-founder and creative director Max Svärdh and Christian Halleröd, blends ‘brutalism and minimalism’ with futuristic-looking features that dot the space. ‘I approach our store formats as I design sneakers,’ explained Svärdh. ‘The shape of the object comes first, the material is secondary.’
Image Credit: Courtesy of Axel Arigato
Location Pilestræde 16, Copenhagen 1112
[+] TOKYO: JINS GINZA
Jo Nagasaka and Schemata Architects developed a JINS eyewear store in Tokyo’s Ginza Loft. The brand – known for carrying 1,200 original frames in different styles in each store – needed a unique presence to differentiate themselves from other retailers in Ginza Loft, and the answer came by way of thousands of Scotch-Brite sponges used as display holders for frames.
Image Credit: Daichi Ano
Location 2-4-6 6F Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
[+] SHANGHAI: HEYTEA HONGQIAO XINTIANDI
This year, Chinese tea brand Heytea has consistently been rolling out well-designed shops. One of the most recent – in Shanghai’s Hongqiao Xintiandi neighbourhood – was executed by the locally based studio Das Lab. The team of architects combined contemporary aesthetics with localised materials, such as red mortar simulating the texture of ‘rammed earth’.
Image Credit: Shao Feng
Location 3721 Hongmei Rd, Changning Qu, Shanghai 200413
[+] PARIS: BDC FLAGSHIP
BDC (Boys Don’t Cry) is a new Payam Askari-designed space for menswear lovers – male and female alike – in Paris’ Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The stainless steel-clad shop, offering brands such as Marni, Palm Angels and Sies Marjan, is adorned with curated artistic elements that can be modified through different seasons.
Image Credit: Giamie Meloni, Courtesy of BDC and Studio Payam Askari
Location 62 Rue des Saints-Pères, 75007 Paris