Translated by
Nicola Mira
Printed
January 22, 2025
Alaïa has elevated its presence in Paris by opening a flagship retailer on one of many metropolis’s most prestigious luxurious purchasing streets. The five hundred-square-metre retailer is positioned simply reverse Lanvin and never removed from Hermès and Cartier, at 15 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, one of many world’s premier luxurious purchasing locations, giving an enormous visibility increase to the Richemont-owned label.
Alaïa’s new retailer is ready inside a nineteenth century constructing previously occupied by Lanvin – Alaïa
The handle, known as ‘Le 15 Faubourg’, emphatically completes Alaïa’s Parisian retail presence, which additionally contains two long-standing shops on rue de Moussy and rue de Marignan. “Each [store] shows a different facet of the house, while preserving the confidential, familial spirit that characterises it,” Alaïa mentioned in a press launch, underlining that this new opening “also means the realisation of Azzedine Alaïa’s dream of having a store on this legendary street.”
The shop’s interiors have been designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa – the famend Japanese architects who based the SANAA company – in collaboration with Pieter Mulier, Alaïa’s inventive director since 2021. The thought was to create an progressive experiential venue, reflecting the label’s key values with its heat, confidential and uncluttered environment, whereas mirroring Alaïa’s type by way of the central idea of a “second skin.”
The interiors really feel like a cocoon, and are impressed by a few of Alaïa’s signature silhouettes, with their smooth, sculptural shapes. The bottom flooring is residence to 4 clear tubular rooms bathed in a pinkish gentle, every devoted to a unique vary of garments and equipment. A spiral staircase leads upstairs, the place the label is exhibiting a few of its fashions in an area that may morph into a non-public lounge, whereas the mezzanine is residence to the Café Sant Ambroeus.
Inside Alaïa’s new Parisian retailer – Alaïa
The entire ambiance has an ultra-minimalist really feel, and the garments are exhibited like artworks. The environment is smooth, nearly ethereal, because of using plush supplies such because the pale pink carpeting, the curving glass partitions, the well-calibrated lighting, and a palette of muted hues, a reference to Alaïa’s typical color vary.
Designer furnishings chosen by Mulier completes the format, for instance a Ron Arad desk, the Mollo armchairs by Philippe Malouin, and sculptures by US artist Diamond Stingily. In 2017, Swiss luxurious group Richemont paid €170 million to purchase this 10-storey constructing relationship again to the nineteenth century, residence to a long-established Lanvin boutique till 2021. The constructing’s renovation work lasted nearly three years.
