Paloma Wool Barcelona by p0 studio | Photography by Adrià Cañameras
Retail is in need of reinvention, and these examples show what happens when you transform a shopfront into an immersive environment. Together, they foreground texture, tone and spatial sequencing as the true luxuries of contemporary retail. In these stores, design lineage sits alongside experimentation, and the experience becomes as memorable as the objects on display.
Paloma Wool Barcelona by p0 studio
Barcelona, Spain
Paloma Wool’s first Barcelona flagship, designed by p0, uses opacity as an unexpected design device. Nothing is entirely fixed or fully revealed. Semi-translucent white partitions produce a soft, hazy atmosphere. This carving of natural and artificial light subtly guides visitors through the space—the veiled quality becomes the store’s defining language.
The arcade-inspired layout establishes a defined transition from street to interior, drawing people along a glazed corridor before opening into a luminous main room where daylight floods in. Here, boundaries dissolve, outside and inside seem to merge. In contrast, the fitting rooms retreat into a quieter zone.
Custom lighting by Max Milà, alongside architectural details complete the environment. The whole project is a playful study in perception where every surface shifts between seen and unseen.
Transparency and illusion are the design devices that define Paloma Wool. Soft ambient lighting brings a fuzziness that is fitting for the Spanish brand. | Photography by Adrià Cañameras
Paloma Wool Barcelona by p0 studio | Photography by Adrià Cañameras
Paloma Wool Barcelona by p0 studio | Photography by Adrià Cañameras
Antonia Shanghai and Guangzhou by Vincenzo de Cotiis Architects
Shanghai and Guangzhou, China
Antonia’s new boutiques in Shanghai and Guangzhou subvert the usual retail formula to create immersive, sensory landscapes. Designed by Vincenzo De Cotiis, the spaces rely on colour, light and materiality to shape movement through chromatic thresholds—a deep burgundy portal in Guangzhou and a sculptural blue stair in Shanghai.
A luminous stretched ceiling gently diffuses light throughout, softening the raw concrete shell and heightening the atmospheric quality of each room. Custom furnishings and joinery in oxidised metal and lacquered wood ripple across surfaces, adding depth, shadow and moments of tactile interest. These crafted insertions blur the line between object and architecture.
Anchored by the signature artistic detailing of De Cotiis, the boutiques unwrap as dramatic interiors that guide visitors through shifting tonalities and textures.
In the Guangzhou store, yellow is the highlight colour, used in a saturated and layered way. Hulking forms and industrial elements add to the mood. | Photography by courtesy of Antonia
Alaïa, Beijing by Halleroed
Beijing, China
Sculptural precision, Alaïa’s new flagship by Halleroed is where futurism and craftsmanship converge in the most sensuous way. A gridded marble façade, punctuated with porthole openings, sets the tone for the otherworldliness inside. Curving, Saarinen-like marble ‘legs’ rise from the floor to form table bases, while a sweeping circular shelving system wraps an egg-shaped room, reinforcing the store’s circular motif.
The interiors merge rounded, organic forms with sharp rectangularity—a dialogue echoed in Maison Alaïa’s own design language. The curved geometries contrast with the millimetre-perfect detailing found throughout, including shadow-box lines that articulate the stair. Black leather seating introduces a counterpoint against skin-toned walls. Circles recur as mirrors, as architectural openings and as a dramatic skylight above, anchoring a space that feels at once experimental, expertly crafted and utterly befitting of Alaïa’s boundary-pushing ethos.
A gridded façade of punctuated marble offers a hint at the unusual design inside. | Photography by Jonathan Leijonhufvud
Alaïa Beijing by Halleroed | Photography by Jonathan Leijonhufvud
Alaïa Beijing by Halleroed | Photography by Jonathan Leijonhufvud
Circles repeat, with sweeping moments a disorienting and kaleidoscopic effect. | Photography by Jonathan Leijonhufvud
Saint Laurent Via Montenapoleone by Anthony Vaccarello
Milan, Italy
Saint Laurent’s Milan flagship reopens inside a storied palazzo on Via Montenapoleone, a site first built in the 1500s and long woven into the city’s architectural fabric. Anthony Vaccarello’s new concept amplifies this sense of heritage, preserving exposed, limewashed brickwork and reinstating traditional materials such as Ceppo di Gré stone and Candoglia marble—the same pink-white stone used as a stone’s throw away on the iconic Duomo. Classical bronze-clad mouldings and hand-finished stucco echo the building’s past, while the sculptural eucalyptus staircase gives a statement of modernity.
Across three levels, the interior layers historic craft with iconic design. A curated collection of pieces by Italian masters—Gio Ponti, the Scarpas, Marco Zanuso, Osvaldo Borsani and Gaetano Pesce—underscores the maison’s reverence for design lineage. At the centre sits a bespoke Vincenzo de Cotiis table, its expressive materiality anchoring the space. The whole environment is a life-size diorama that captures Saint Laurent’s enduring aesthetic.
Saint Laurent Via Montenapoleone by Anthony Vaccarello | Photography by Saint Laurent
Saint Laurent Via Montenapoleone by Anthony Vaccarello | Photography by Saint Laurent
Minimalist, sophisticated and sculptural—the bones of the Milan flagship of Saint Laurent capture heritage and enduring design. | Photography by Saint Laurent
Spaces Within by Daniel Kutlesovski | Photography by Erik Lefvander
Spaces Within by Daniel Kutlesovski
Copenhagen, Denmark
‘Patina of Use’ transforms the banality of door hardware into the main event, using scale, texture and theatricality to draw the eye exactly where it needs to go. For his second collaboration with Spaces Within, Daniel Kutlesovski constructs a materially rich world where waxed canvas wraps the interior in soft, mutable surface. The brown material echoes the living patina of the uncoated hardware.
Hand-sewn panels of ‘joinery’ with exposed edges and exaggerated volumes express a welcomed rawness. Walls of monotone colour allow the products to hold the spotlight. By going back to the design basics of colour, form and proportion, Patina of Use is a sensory invitation—a reminder that even the smallest details deserve a stage of their own.
Spaces Within by Daniel Kutlesovski | Photography by Erik Lefvander
A creative and experimental canvas writ large, Patina of Use is an installation that draws attention to one of the smallest, but most impactful design details—hardware. | Photography by Erik Lefvander