Brooklyn Museum Launches Exhibit on African Fashion

Peter Marino Architect Renovates a 3-Story Dior Boutique in Paris, Spotlighting the Brands ‘Inner Essence’

2022 Best of Year Winner for Fashion Retail

Back open after a two-plus-year renovation, Dior’s 50,000-square-foot, three-level boutique—which includes haute couture salons, two eateries, three gardens, and a bookable private apartment—unfolds in a spatiotemporal narrative akin to a theater set, creating what firm principal and Interior Design Hall of Fame member Peter Marino describes as a journey through the “inner essence” of the brand. “It’s not one idea through­out but, rather, walk-through spaces that tell a story, that keep the customer engaged and emotionally connected with Dior from start to finish.”

The concept pays homage to Christian Dior’s love of fine art and plant life with commissioned works, many nature-themed or conveying a sense of movement: Guy Limone’s immersive collage of archival Dior photographs in a café; sliding panels combining jute and gilded gesso by Nancy Lorenz in fine jewelry; Joël Andrianomearisoa’s textile-based Ultime Saison, 2021, anchoring a mezzanine seating area. Sartorial tropes abound—note how the rotunda’s spiral staircase ripples like the train of a ballgown, backdropped by a monochromatic installation of Dior designs through the ages. A stylistic mash-up of eras comingles parquet de Versailles flooring and classic boiserie paneling with vintage furniture by the likes of Gabriella Crespi and Joaquim Tenreiro, plus more than 100 specified materials (pandemic supply-chain issues be damned, Marino notes), from white stucco and French limestone to embroidered silk.

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A Look at the Art, Architecture, and Fashion That Defined 2022

Amid a sea of global ups and downs, the art, architecture, and fashion of 2022 uplifted our horizons.

Art and Design That Defined the Year and the Creatives Behind It 

Hosper

VisKringloop, an earthwork collaboration between the landscape architecture firm, artist Pé Okx, and ecologist Cor ten Haaf in Wieringermeer, Netherlands, celebrates marine ecology, where fish swim through meandering circular paths across the 40-acre site and visitors can climb a painted-steel staircase for a birds-eye view.

Guo Pei

“Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy,” the prolific couturier’s summer exhibition at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor museum, showcased two decades worth of her influence, from Olympic athletes to singer Rihanna, with such highlights as silk-embroidered and gold-foil dresses.

Mario Cucinella

Santa Maria Goretti, a concrete church in Mormanno, Italy, by the sustainability-minded architect, features a cross-shape incision at the entrance that is lit at night.

Steve Messam

The British environmental artist’s three-part exhibition, “These Passing Things,” spanned Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Park, an 800-acre UNESCO World Heritage Site amidst the ruins of a medieval monastery in Northern England, and included the starburst yellow nylon Spiked and the scarlet polyester Bridged.

Skull Studio

The fall iteration of Concéntrico, the annual international festival of architecture, design, and urbanism in Logroño, Spain, featured this playground installation made from painted MDF boards and steel beams to convey optic and haptic sensations to visitors via stimulating colors arranged in an irregular rhythm.

Studio Odile Decq

At Antares Barcelona, a luxe, wellness-focused residential tower in Spain, the subterranean swimming pool occupies a grottolike room with a mirror-polished stainless-steel ceiling that’s the underside of the building’s parking-garage ramp.

Vitale

Geometric archways and neo-Memphis colors create a playful, anxiety-reducing environment for young patients at Isabel Cadroy, Dentista Infantil, a pediatric dental office in Castellón de la Plana, Spain.

Craig Green

Elemental and multifunctional fashion constructions reminiscent of insectlike exoskeletons and circus tents presented at the sixth edition of the annual Moncler Genius campaign harmonized with the alpine brand’s adventurous aesthetic.

Big-Bjarke Ingels Group

Although LEGO House, a 130,000-square-foot experience center in Billund, Denmark, comprised of 21 staggered blocks that recall the toy company’s plastic bricks, was completed in 2017, LEGO Group celebrated its 90th anniversary in 2022.

Yuko Nishikawa

The ceramicist and industrial designer stood amid Memory Function, her temporary installation of over 200 mobiles crafted from paper-pulp waste, commissioned by the Brooklyn Home Company for a model apartment at Butler Collection, a residential complex in Park Slope, New York.

Piet Mondrian

The 1916 oil landscape Farm Near Duivendrecht was part of “Mondrian Evolution,” a summer exhibition at Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, that marked the 150th anniversary of the Dutch painter’s birth by tracing the development of his style, from early fig­ur­ative works to the abstract color studies for which he would become best known.

Virginia San Fratello

The architect and Emerging Objects cofounder’s 1-foot-tall Sexy Beast vessel is covered in a “shag” of earthenware extruded from a 3-D printer, then cut and blown dry.

Field Conforming Studio

Laser-cut plates of Cor-Ten steel form the Vanished House, a permanent installation in China’s Wuhan Shimenfeng Memorial Park conceived as a memorial to home, life, and loss.

Kate Millet

Piano & Stool, in­corp­orating found leather boots, and the Bachelor’s Apartment cabinet were part of “Fantasy Furniture, 1967,” a retrospective at Salon 94 Design gallery in New York.

Consequence Forma

The 9,700-square-foot gymnasium at Czechia’s Nový Hrozenkov Primary School Sports Hall, which is also open to the public, has a James Turrell–style skylight that visitors can reach toward as they ascend its colorful climbing wall.

Aulík Fišer Architekti

Aerial, a concrete installation by Federico Díaz weighing 125,000 pounds and standing 25 feet tall, towers above a piazzetta at the firm’s Borˇislavka Center, an office and retail complex in Prague.

Cecilia Vicuña

The Chilean artist’s nearly 90-foot Brain Forest Quipu, a mixed-media installation in sculpture, sound, and video, hangs until April 16 in the Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern, the interwoven, skeletal forms suggesting the delicate forces of our ecosystem.

This Showroom for a Leading Fabric Company in Shanghai Honors the Tactility of Textiles

As one of China’s industry leaders, Semir is more than just another fabric company, and so their new Semir Materials Creative Center needed to be more than just another showroom. For its sprawling, 10,000+ square feet, Shanghai’s Yushe Design—a 2021 Interior Design Best of Year Awards honoree—crafted a space that honors the tactile fluidity of fabric itself.

An open atrium offers a catwalk and ersatz auditorium for press conferences. Curved walls cut the remaining space into zones for offices, socializing, and displays for trends and accessories. “The insertion of curved elements breaks the stable and homogenous status of the original rectangular space,” says Yushe’s Nicole Ma. 

Materials include polycarbonate reinforced with steel pipe, with “an internal light belt,” Ma says, that “adds a sense of future of technology.” The color palette, meanwhile, focuses on white and grey, which are always in fashion. 

Ancient Architecture Informs This Contemporary Boutique in Hangzhou, China

For a women’s clothing boutique in Hangzhou, China—Yinno Unico—MMC Design was inspired by Greek mythology and forms. “Athena, the goddess of wisdom, still a role model for women today, offered a main source of inspiration,” chief designer Chen Linping explains. Doric columns of ancient temples also offered geometric influence, as seen in passageways and seating areas. 

But the interpretation of both the divine muse and architectural history is thoroughly contemporary. A sculptural granite-and-steel form greets shoppers at the entrance. A neutral palette is sharply interrupted by crimson benches and displays. And the levels of the 3,200-square-foot boutique are joined by an angular staircase, built in layered micro cement. Lighting, meanwhile, is a mix of LED and natural light. 

This Smart-Eyewear Brand Champions Design Simplicity

High fashion and high tech are no longer mutually exclusive, as proven by the latest innovation from London-based studio Layer: extended-reality glasses called Viture One. “The aim is to stream media anywhere, while the design philosophy is about simplicity,” founder and creative director Benjamin Hubert explains. Throughout a six-month collaboration with San Francisco start-up Viture, Hubert contemplated hundreds of prototypes, crafting gestural drawings and watercolor mockups before arriving at the final product, which looks like a pair of traditional sunglasses yet is anything but.

“The smart-eyewear space is typically populated by over-designed, overly technical frames,” Hubert adds. “We’re delivering the antithesis of that trend.” Inspired by such timeless styles as the Ray-Ban Wayfarer, the silhouette conceals technical elements, including surround-sound speakers. The frames are paired with a semiflexible, lightweight neckband that discreetly houses hardware and battery. In neutral colorways and finishes—Jet Black, Marshmallow, glossy or matte Indigo—and adjustable prescription lenses, Viture One sees everyone.

Flavio Albanese Collaborates With Thom Browne on His New Tennis Shop in Saint-Tropez

In the fashion world, Thom Browne is well-known for redefining tailored men’s and women’s wear. Less known, however, is that he was a competitive tennis player in high school. Both talents come together at the Thom Browne Saint-Tropez Tennis Pro Shop, his new stand-alone store at the French private members club Épi. The project is a collaboration with Flavio Albanese, founder of ASA Studio Albanese, which helped design Brown’s Miami 2018 flagship.

Similar to that location, the boutique is outfitted nearly head to toe in gray subway tile—a nod to vintage locker rooms. But whereas Florida’s is dark gray, this location is lighter toned, complimenting the resort’s wellness focus, and approximately a quarter of the size. Browne and Albanese have tastefully accessorized the tidy space with mid-century furniture by such American and French designers as Paul McCobb and Pierre Jeanneret, along with custom pieces. And then aced it all with a door-to-door strip on the floor of red, white, and blue tile—the brand’s signature stripe found on the grosgrain-tab labels in Thom Browne merchandise.

All Design Studio Takes Retail Design into the Future With This Shoe Store in China

Since its founding in 2016, All Design Studio has pushed the boundaries of retail design throughout China and beyond. But when MTS asked them to design a new shoe store on the third floor of Beijing’s Dong’an Luxemporium, the studio went back to the lab. 

Or back to the future, to the lab, perhaps: the 1,700-square-foot space resembles a science-fiction research from the year 3000. “Nowadays, the production process and design of shoes breaks away from the traditional,” says All Design Studio founder Gnial Liang, “and so our design is inspired by futuristic design.” 

A cylindrical installation at the entrance references a petri dish, with tubes delivering “nutrition” to new shoe designs, surrounded by four silver sets of shoe chairs. Metal shelving in cement-finished nooks and open-backed units display the full-grown results of MTS’s explorations. The final effect is science fiction made fact.

Hermès Gets Healthy With Pop-Up Gyms Around the Globe

Focusing more on biceps than their signature Birkin bag, French luxury fashion house Hermès has been quietly entering the fitness realm with a series of impeccably curated physical education–inspired pop-ups. Branded as HermèsFit, the spaces both show off the hallowed French maison’s interior credentials in the U.S. while providing a more egalitarian access point to its culture for next generation customers who might not yet be able to attain one of its signature scarves.

First up, the brand transformed a fairly anonymous vintage bow-truss commercial space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The orange-hued fitness fantasy took aesthetic cues from Hermés accessories, offering space where one could do yoga with a carré, stretch with belts, and kickbox with bangles in late 2021, followed by activations in Chengdu and Bangkok.

Architecture became more relevant when HermèsFit moved in July to the Hollywood Athletic Club designed in 1924 by Meyer and Holler, the same architectural firm that built Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and the Egyptian Theatre. Across spaces where former members like Charlie Chaplin, John Wayne, Walt Disney, Clark Gable, and Humphrey Bogart used to hang out graphic motifs adorned the walls. Custom Hermès barbells and kettlebells, as well as a climbing wall, which doubled as a photo booth, and a juice bar added to the appeal. In the evening, the central boxing ring transformed into a stage for a different kind of fun with performances by the L.A. Dance Project, Pearl and The Oysters, and DJ Erez.

4 Sensorial Retail Locales Around the Globe

These four futuristic stores from around the globe show that modern clothing retailers are not looking back.

David Chipperfield Architects

Akris, Washington

The prototype of the Swiss fashion brand’s new store concept, this 2,300-square-foot boutique references Bruno Munari’s tensile spatial structures to reduce all display elements to the minimum. Ergo, a system of taut cables supports shelves and hangers so that the clothing and accessories appear to be magically suspended within a neutral architectural box of maple paneling and limestone flooring.

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ROOI Design & Research

KIKS Beijing

For the redesign of the 1,300-square-foot multibrand streetwear store, physical and conceptual coherence was introduced with a solar system–like layout that emphasizes the retailer’s gravitational pull on producers and consumers alike. A central architectural element comprising monolithic curved walls clad in green marble or stainless steel is encircled by hanging clothes racks, shoe display cases, and moveable partitions like planets orbiting the KIKS sun.

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Carolina Maluhy + Partners

Cris Barros, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Marking a 15-year-plus relationship between the Brazilian fashion brand and the London and São Paulo–based designer, the 4,300-square-foot boutique features sinuous curves, natural materials, a creamy palette, and such handmade pieces as the wooden totems on which Frida Não Late’s ceramic sculptures display jewelry. Generously scaled portals connect the four rooms, which include a soaring space with a pebble-lined pool and a luminous cupola ceiling.

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Atmosphere Architects

Hug concept store, Chengdu, China

For this fashion retailer, which offers a curated collection of independent designers from around the world, an avant-garde yet neutral environment illuminated by shadowless backlit ceilings — think 2001: A Space Odyssey — puts focus on the clothing. Curved elements, geometric grids overhead, and pops of fluorescent color, including the brand’s trademark blue, offset the extensive use of shiny chrome and silver surfaces.

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