The Conceptual Boldness of IMMIs Shanghai Flagship Store

2019-03-14 14:25

Located in Xintiandi, a vibrant, upscale commercial district in Shanghai, China, that combines modern architecture with cobbled lanes and century-old stone buildings, this new flagship store for high-end apparel brand IMMI dazzles with its ethereal elegance and its conceptual boldness. Launched by Chinese designers Joyce and Wu Xiaomin in 2015, the brand has gained a reputation for its ascetic refinement, exquisite tailoring and environmentally friendly fabrics. Seoul-based design studio Creative Studio Unravel (CSU) drew inspiration from the brand’s distinctive aesthetic to create a retail interior that architecturally reflects the clothes’ minimalist sophistication, subdued colour palette, and high level of craftsmanship, while celebrating the creative process by conceptualizing the brand’s birth.

坐落在新天帝，一个充满活力的高档商业区，在中国上海，结合现代建筑鹅卵石巷和百年老石材建筑，这家新的旗舰店为高端服装品牌IMMI以其虚幻的优雅和概念性大胆令人眼花缭乱。该品牌由中国设计师乔伊斯和吴晓敏于2015年推出，以其严谨的精致、精致的裁剪和环保的面料而享有盛誉。位于首尔的设计工作室CreativeStudioUnravel(CSU)从品牌独特的美学中汲取灵感，创造了一个零售内部，在建筑上反映了服装的简约感、柔和的调色板和高水平的工艺，同时通过概念化品牌的诞生来庆祝创作过程。

Photo by Han Sunghoon.

图为韩圣勋。

Photo by Han Sunghoon.

图为韩圣勋。

Photo by Han Sunghoon.

图为韩圣勋。

Photo by Han Sunghoon.

图为韩圣勋。

Photo by Han Sunghoon.

图为韩圣勋。

Photo by Han Sunghoon.

图为韩圣勋。

Conceived as a figurative womb that forms the heart of the store, a sumptuously glossy, red-coloured area boldly pops out of the all-white interiors. The womb-like enclosure is a symbol of the brand’s long incubation period before it was introduced to the world as well as Joyce and Xiaomin’s ‘maternal instincts’. It is also a tribute to the creative process: like giving birth to a child, hatching an idea and forging it into an actual, physical design is an intense process, detached from everyday reality and the rigid rules that govern it. And it is this is that is the ultimate significance of the gleaming red zone: to present a fluid view of reality through a profusion of distorted, coloured reflections and refractions, made all the more intense by the illuminated ceiling. If the store’s cherry-red zone is the notional womb where fashion is incubated, then the metallic carts that roll out of it are the delivery system that brings the clothes into the world. Embedded into the floor, the rails that crisscross the retail area have both a practical and a conceptual raison d'être. The rolling carts are equipped with shelving, hooks or garment racks which make them in effect movable displays, allowing infinite configurations and merchandizing options.

作为一个形象的子宫，形成了商店的心脏，一个华丽的光泽，红色的区域大胆地从全白色的内部弹出。子宫状的外壳象征着该品牌在被引入世界之前的漫长潜伏期，以及乔伊斯和小敏的“母性本能”。这也是对创造性过程的一种赞扬：就像生孩子一样，孵化一个想法并将其锻造成一个实际的概念，物理设计是一个紧张的过程，脱离日常现实和管理它的严格规则。这就是闪烁的红色区域的终极意义：通过大量扭曲的、彩色的反射和折射，呈现一种对现实的流动看法，被照亮的天花板变得更加强烈。如果说这家商店的樱桃红色区域是时尚孵化的名义子宫，那么推出它的金属手推车就是把衣服带到世界各地的送货系统。镶嵌在地板上的横贯零售领域的铁轨既有实用的，也有概念上的存在理由。滚动手推车配备了货架，挂钩或服装架，这实际上是可移动的显示器，允许无限的配置和商品化的选择。

Photo by Han Sunghoon.

图为韩圣勋。

Photo by Han Sunghoon.

图为韩圣勋。

Photo by Han Sunghoon.

图为韩圣勋。

Photo by Han Sunghoon.

图为韩圣勋。

Photo by Han Sunghoon.

图为韩圣勋。

Photo by Han Sunghoon.

图为韩圣勋。

Photo by Han Sunghoon.

图为韩圣勋。

Photo by Han Sunghoon.

图为韩圣勋。

But these are not ordinary display carts; many of them feature a clutter of metallic and Plexiglas industrial looking solids that seem, to use CSU’s terminology, “obtuse and irregular, even ugly”. Drawing from Theodor W. Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory, the designers have conceived these “seemingly useless and ugly objects” as an antidote to the repressing aesthetics of conventional beauty. As they gracefully move around the space, these unconventional carts, not all of which are used for clothing displays, force shoppers to re-calibrate their preconceived ideas of beauty as well as what essentially a commercial space should be like. Besides the throbbing red ‘womb’, the subdued interior design is also punctured by blue Plexiglas surfaces that provide a cool counterweight to the store’s crimson core. United by a design language of basic geometric forms, the red, blue, metallic and transparent elements that furnish the white-washed interiors fittingly resemble a three-dimensional Suprematist painting. And as such, the store seems to extol the supremacy of pure feeling in the creative process, very much like the fashion designers behind the IMMI brand.

但这些并不是普通的展示车；它们中的许多都是杂乱的金属和有机玻璃工业固体，用CSU的术语来说，这些固体看起来“钝而不规则，甚至丑陋”。借鉴西奥多·W·阿多诺的美学理论，设计师们将这些“看似无用而丑陋的物体”设想为对传统美的压抑美学的解药。当他们优雅地在空间里走动时，这些非传统的手推车，并不是所有的都被用于服装展示，迫使购物者重新校准他们对美的先入为主的观念，以及本质上的商业空间应该是什么样的。除了跳动的红色‘子宫’，柔和的室内设计也被蓝色有机玻璃表面刺穿，为商店的深红色核心提供了一个凉爽的平衡重量。由一种基本几何形式的设计语言，红色，蓝色，金属和透明的元素，提供白色的内饰恰如其分地像一个三维的超级画家的绘画。因此，商店似乎赞美纯粹的感觉在创作过程中的至高无上，就像IMMI品牌背后的时装设计师一样。