You’ll likely recognise them by their sleek and linear interiors, music pumping as if from an underground club scene or a fashion catwalk prance, surprises around every corner, as well as innovative magazines – and fashion – that are far from the mainstream, yet dictating the very trends the mainstream will likely follow.
Welcome to the Concept Store, the retail manifestation of the cult of individuality and the new, new thing. Almost all have excellent positioning on luxury shopping streets and express as much about their immediate cultural region as they do about the beating pulse of international design. Concept stores are a worldwide phenomenon; in fact, they could be the focal point of a world tour, bluntly entitled All-in-One Urban Style Destinations.
Concept stores are poised as resources of design-centric delight – often with spas, cafés, and vintage corners to boot – for creative professionals seeking inspiration, or those simply interested in the beautiful life and gift ideas galore. What is really on sale, however, is a lifestyle concept, a ‘total look’ for the details of daily living. Concept stores are where retailers can fancy themselves as artistic curators and where, in terms of style, eclecticism is king.
London
Dover Street Market
Get lost between the six levels of covetable avant-garde fashion, design and art objects at Dover Street Market. Accessible and eclectic as they come, this conceptual shopping experience features collaborations with Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz that mingle alongside designs by Jan de Cock, Hiroshi Fujiwara as well as harbouring the only European holding ground for L.A.-based Decades boutique, known for highly-desired vintage items. Warning: fashionistas will melt.
17-18 Dover Street, London, England +44 20 7518 0680
Paris
Colette
Located in luxury retail central – just steps from Place Vendôme – Colette cuts a fresh corner that consistently overflows with international aesthetes, especially during Paris Fashion Week. A three (and a half)-floor expo of fun gadgets, fresh sneakers and fierce fashion, its creative turnover is like quicksilver. Their on-line presence is equally delightful – for at-home shopping, of course, but also keep the page open for hours and delight in a soundtrack of some of the most innovative music on the international wavelengths.
213 rue Saint-Honoré, 75001 Paris, France +33 1 55 35 33 90
Paris
Merci
There's already Collette and L'Eclaireur among many others, so does Paris really need another concept store? Apparently so, especially if the concept is original and the profits go directly to a children's charity in Madagascar. Merci is popular among sophisticated French intelligentsia and style-makers, and for good reason. The store's owners Bernard and Marie-France Cohen, who are also the founders of Bonpoint (the children's clothing line that is de rigueur for the little ones of bon chic, bon genre), chose to forget cool watches and sneakers, and instead offer a carefully sourced collection of exquisite homeware, covetable vintage clothing and accessories such as Dior and Charles Jourdan shoes — even canvas spats — with an in-house florist and bookstore (that feels like a cosy home library). To this polite and enticing concept store we say, in return, “mais merci à vous.”
111 Boulevard Beaumarchais, Paris, France +33 1 42 77 00 33
Frankfurt
Abaci
A stone’s throw from Frankfurt’s luxury retail line-up on Goethestrasse, Abaci’s concept speaks to the modern continental gentleman. Headed by a Turkish designer who delineates his initiative by a “unique and incisive” as well as “classic but not conservative” style, Abaci is perhaps best considered a resource for made-to-measure garments. Bespoke suits can be ordered to be sewn completely by hand, and are produced in Italy. Through collaboration with Italo Ferretti for ties and scarves, and with the largest selection of Santoni shoes in Germany, Abaci expresses a clean and masculine aesthetic in its bold and starkly white angled interior.
Junghofstrasse 14, Frankfurt, Germany +49 69 2193 55 88
Berlin
The Corner
The Corner carries the entire fashion alphabet: Alaïa, Balenciaga, Christian Louboutin…and so forth. Occupying, literally, a prominent corner at Gendarmenmarkt (with a smaller, newer outpost in Charlottenburg), The Corner is a bold space with plenty to discover in the way of sartorial delights and style magazines. Having hosted the 2009 launch party for art entrepreneur Simon de Pury’s own debut as a photographer (he himself even took to the DJ tables for the event), The Corner continues to be a centre for commercially creative ventures and seductive styles of the more luxurious sort, in one of the most vibrant cities for the current artistic Zeitgeist.
Franzoesische Strasse 40, 10117 Berlin, Germany +49 30 20 670 940
Moscow
Cara & Co.
With Australian roots, Cara & Co brings a refreshing take on fashion to Russia. They have a "No Logos, Fashion Only" mantra, encouraging its shoppers to fall in love with the unique pieces on offer because of genuine adoration. What began by selling t-shirts and giving 20 per cent of the proceeds to charity, is now a venture that dedicates 10 per cent of all profits for the period between September 1st and December 31st to a charity initiative for the aid of deaf children, entitled “The Sound World”, that harbors plans for further charitable expansion in the future. Style with a conscience is a commendable concept indeed.
Vinzavod Modern Art Centre, 4th Syromyatnichesky Pereulok, Moscow, Russia +7 495 223 41 01
Seoul
10 Corso Como
Milanese design doyenne Carla Sozzani (sister of Italian Vogue Editor Franca Sozzani) has expanded her highly successful Milan-based concept store to the east with a Tokyo outpost and a stunning space in the Korean capital. Designed by Kris Ruhs and situated in Cheongdam-dong, there are three levels of presentation space for men and women’s fashion, design, music, books and a garden restaurant café. It all together conveys a bright, cheerful and eclectically creative aesthetic, and bears the signature repeating concentric circles that mark 10 Corso Como’s unique interplay of graphics and space.
79 Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Korea +82 2 3018 1010
Tokyo
Restir
Restir aims to make shopping an experience that is, above all, intimate and personalised. The store has a highly developed stylist and concierge service, which is commendable in that they take their role as lifestyle gurus seriously. The store features an exhibition space devoted to art and fashion in a multi-sensory multimedia format. Deeply connected to European fashion with an impressive line-up of ready-to-wear heavyweights, Restir describes its role as a stylistic curator as “ultimately self-centred”. For those looking for some serious shopping, with made-to-measure guidance, Restir rests at your service.
9-7-4 Akasaka Minato-ku Tokyo, Japan +81 3 5413 3708
Melbourne
Alphaville
With four store locations across Austrlia, Alphaville maintains throughout all a rugged, seductive appeal, driven by film noir chic. The website has an entire page, entitled ‘Our Hero’, with an iconic image of French cinematic legend director Jean-Luc Godard. The store’s ‘concept’, it could be said, is about capturing the style of such kings of cool through a unified aesthetic in selecting women’s and men’s clothing, accessories and ‘sunnies’ (sunglasses). They have even printed their own range of T-shirts with black and white images of their French hero as well as the recklessly handsome River Phoenix among others. Who knew classic films could be so modern?
201 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, Australia +61 3 96633002
(179 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, Australia +61 3 94164296
230 Chapel Street, Prahran, Australia +61 3 95102626
32 Oxford Street, Paddington, Australia +61 2 93577788) DELETE THESE IF THEY DON’T FIT
