London Layout Festival 2015: British designer Tom Dixon has partnered with Selfridges to open a multi-sensory temporary department store at the Outdated Selfridges Hotel in London .
The Multiplex division keep hosts vogue, fragrance, technological innovation, furniture, equipment, elegance and food from a assortment of far more than 30 global brands and designers. Tom Dixon’s machine component-shaped Cog lights and reflective Brew coffee sets are also among the assortment of items on display.
“It really is a parasite on Selfridges,” Dixon told Dezeen. “Possibly it’s like the navel in a navel orange, or a world inside a planet. I will not want to be a parasite but there are benign parasites.”
The shop inhabits the disused twenty,000-square-foot Old Selfridges Hotel area, which is connected to Selfridges’ flagship Oxford Street retailer. HTC previously converted the room into a temporary skatepark.
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The concrete interiors have been draped in folded silver foil hangings, which according to Dixon take their reference from the International Room Station and the toilet in artist Andy Warhol’s infamous New York studio, identified as the Factory.
Dixon explained he’d been “pestering” Selfridges for two years for an possibility to do something with the space. He described the installation as an attempt to reclaim the globe of retail from the ever-developing threat of on the web retailers, and a chance to develop a more engaging setting.
“I wanted to see what happens if you get the raw vitality that exists in London elsewhere and stick it correct bang in the middle of 1 of the greatest division retailers in the world,” he stated.
“What happens if you stick the individuals that are generally ghettoised in smaller sized design and style outlets or much less rich environments all with each other, and give them a platform to talk?”
This perspective towards retail follows on from his ideas for The Cinema exhibition in Milan earlier this year, exactly where the designer’s newly unveiled goods were offered straight from the space.
The collections on show at Multiplex are eclectic, from Haeckel’s all-natural Margate-manufactured fragrances, to British eyewear brand Cubitts, which will be hand-making charcoal and concrete frames in-store for consumers.
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There’s also brand names like Reviv – who are supplying intravenous nutritional vitamins to keep visitors – invention kickstarting platform Mindblower, and Swedish synth-makers Teenager Engineering.
The mix of items came about through “organic development” – a combine of bringing collectively Dixon’s network of contacts, and cold-calling promising manufacturers and designers.
“If I’d ended up with a big art department or toy division, I would have been content, simply because I wanted to make unexpected connections, so we cast the net wide,” he mentioned.
“I will not consider men and women reside in departments like you do in correct division merchants, exactly where toys are on one particular level and beauty is on a whole floor proper at the bottom,” Dixon additional. “You do your makeup in the kitchen, or your work on the dining table. Men and women do not live in the way stores separate issues.”
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An in-retailer photographic studio has also been set up, in partnership with Spring Studios, and Apple have supplied Macs for a co-operating space.
It truly is not the initial luxury division shop collaboration for Dixon, who partnered with Harrods in 2014 to lend his name to a sandwich cafe.
Multiplex will continue to be open until finally 15 October 2015, as component of this year’s London Design Festival, which will take location from 19 to 27 September.
