New York: Shop talk

New York is a place where anything can happen. New Yorkers know this, and for that reason, nothing surprises them anymore. Historians may conclude that the collapse of the 110-storey World Trade Center towers may be the most terrifying incident in New York’s history. The awful images of the towers crumbling to the ground must have been ingrained in the subconscious of every New Yorker.

When I asked my New Yorker friends what all this meant to them, the consensus was that the real shock of September 11 wasn’t the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, or even the second plane hitting the second tower, but rather the thought that it was going to take some time to fix the damage caused by the terrorists. I thought about how New Yorkers, famed for their ability to analyze and rationalize, are finally coming to terms with the events of September 11.

When I paid my respects to New York eight months after 9/11, there were signs everywhere that the city was working its way back to normal. Restaurants and theaters were beginning to get crowded once more. The economy was showing signs of life. In the aftermath of disaster, Americans have re-evaluated the importance of personal and family values. The sense of national identity, collective spirit and community support was paramount.

The Tower of Light, an installation of hundreds of upward-pointing searchlights arrayed near the World Trade Center site, beams its strong iridescent light, making New Yorkers feel good seeing the phantom of the Twin Towers light up the sky every night.

The Show Must Go On

In New York, shopping has become more about getting their minds off things for some. People are window-shopping, making the effort to give their lives a semblance of normalcy, but I don’t think anyone’s heart is really into shopping right now. Only the really hard-core shoppers are shopping again. There are undercurrents of pain and uncertainty. People are afraid something might happen to them while they’re out shopping.

In the same context, a new black linen shirt or handbag seems frivolous. The adage "the show must go on" applies to the heroes at Ground Zero and the average Joe making his daily buck, but stops fast at the suggestion of overt personal indulgence.

Not all of New York is suffering from low retail sales. In some parts of upper Manhattan, women are trying to live in an unchanged uptown world. Ladies continue to lunch and the tough still tough it out and go shopping. These people still need their therapists and their personal shopping assistants at the top designer stores. It is almost as if by staying in the familiar, expensive environs of upper 5th and Madison Avenue, where anonymity is guaranteed, they can pretend that nothing has really happened to change the character of the city.

Since late last summer, enormous hoardings on Madison Avenue heralded the arrival of a number of flagship stores for some of the world’s recognized brands. The success of these stores would depend on the re-emergence of rich New Yorkers trooping to these exclusive shopping haunts. There is speculation that the new flagship stores will open within weeks of one another to build momentum for the area.

International architects and designers are shaping these environments. Following the concept established in Milan and London, David Chipperfield is designing the New York Store for Dolce & Gabbana. Also, a team of designers and architects is responsible for Burberry’s refurbishment. Cartier reopened in September, designed by French architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte who restored the building based on its classical tradition.

In TriBeCa, we saw the new flagship store of Issey Miyake designed by Frank Gehry and Gordon Kipping. Their work transformed a historical cast-iron warehouse into a sculptural space for strategic display.

The much-ballyhooed Prada flagship store designed by Rem Koolhaas (featured in June 8 issue of Modern Living) moved retailing away from pure sales to a new dimension when its doors opened early December. Also, Downtown SoHo and Broadway saw new stores opening: DKNY, Stone Island, Tommy Hilfiger, MAC Cosmetics and Emporio Armani.

New York’s Mayor Bloomberg has encouraged people to spend to make the economy robust once more. The Fifth Avenue corridor is already more active on weekends. Uptown neighborhoods are more removed from the epicenter of disaster. Area retailers have been supporting this effort. Bloomingdale’s window created a display based on the new Mamma Mia Broadway musical. This is a bold attempt to bring normalcy back into the New Yorker’s life.

Lord & Taylor on Fifth Avenue plays the national anthem every morning before the store opens. These things give New Yorkers a great sense of what it means to be an American.

Window display artists have a great responsibility to present an enthusiastic, lively environment for customers. After all, a neighborhood store has to be able to convince people to shop normally.

Roger Gomez, a New York resident for 20 years now, defined to me, "New Yorkers are the cockroaches of the human race. We are survivors. This city is full of creative Type-A personalities who always rise to the occasion."

And true to his words, I am continuously fascinated by the new things brewing in this city. The atmosphere of retail is something I always look forward to. A multitude of stores have opened since my visit April this year. I have compiled a list of some of Manhattan’s retail newcomers who have caused a second wave of shock since September 11.

Gehry’s ‘tornado’

On the corner of Hudson St. and North Moore St. is TriBeCa, a fully adaptable space marked by the work of two sculptors. The folded, twisted shapes of Frank Gehry’s architecture are echoed in the sculptural pleats which have come to be one of Issey Miyake’s trademarks.

The area is characterized by turn-of-the-century industrial buildings. The store’s location was handpicked by Miyake. The area south of Canal St. was sealed off post-September 11. The store’s opening had to be postponed, which had serious implications for a company dealing in fashion.

The project itself was collaborative. When Gehry was offered the commission, he agreed on the proviso that he could appoint his young protégé Gordon Kipping as architect, a move which apparently pleased Miyake.

The new Miyake space combines for the first time, in a single, brilliant, exclusive synthesis of commercial-architectonic display, the men’s and women’s collections, fragrances, the Pleats Please production, alongside products never before available in the United States, like the "A-POC" (A Piece of Cloth) series, "HaaT" and "me." This complete range of commercial offerings is accompanied, in the three levels of the building, by offices and the showroom, making the new headquarters some sort of a modern workshop-cum-atelier that combines couture experimentation with retailing, research on new materials with investigation of new production modes.

The most obvious architectural element used to accomplish Miyake’s goal is Gehry’s titanium sculpture located conspicuously at the entrance of the boutique. A looming titanium gale made of the same materials as the architect’s Bilbao Guggenheim, the sculpture is suspended above the sales counter in a posture of frozen animation. It heaves and whispers, almost cresting, paying homage to the power of strong ideas.

Disparate elements when drawn together make the space kinetic: Kipping’s highly graphic glass path, exposed vintage beams combined with murals by Gehry’s son serve to draw the eye and the shopper through the space on each floor.

Downstairs, the visitor arrives at the center of the basement shop space which is enclosed by sliding glass panels within a larger room, echoing the traditional sliding screens of Japanese architecture. The large glass parallel-piped contains the showroom, organized with essential display fixtures of explicit industrial rubber wheels and solid tables in the same material.

Around the showroom, a corridor separates the space from the workstations organized in a functional way along the margins of available space.

The floor is a combination of wood and toughened glass to create solid islands with a glass border around the edge, enabling glimpses through the floor into the basement. The original wooden beams have been retained at ceiling level, as have the cast-iron columns.

In essence, the store epitomizes what Miyake is all about. He has always chosen to work with interesting designers and architects, such as Shigeru Ban in Japan and the Bouroullec brothers in France. In short, this is a client passionate about design and creativity. The TriBeCa store is a place where things come together – part shop, part art space, a laboratory and an atelier.

Be MAC guest

A lab for the infusion of new ideas and a playscape for designers – a place where people can truly experiment" is how New York’s SoHo MAC (Make-Up Art Cosmetics) intends to become, according to its creative director James Gager. Selling a brand associated more with drag queens and wayward rock stars than with fashion models, MAC shops have attracted a clientele keen to project an off-the-wall image. The company has also been quick to promote the socially-conscious aspect of its activities. Every cent spent on the Viva Glam lipstick range goes directly into the company’s AIDS fund.

Basically neutral, the six-meter-high retail space boasts white walls and a floor virtually drained of color. The most striking feature is the gravity-defying, translucent flooring, which peels up and twists sideways at the rear of the store to demarcate two rooms used for private make-up consultations. The floor also curls at the front of the store, sticking its tongue into the shop window to provide a single display platform.

The curved floor panels could quite easily have been made of plywood. But the fact that the designers, Ove Arup and Partners, chose resin and acrylic to create translucence posed a real challenge – especially in terms of refining all the connecting details.

Moving around the space, customers perceive these fields of color in constantly shifting combinations. No fewer than 18 different mat designs were created for the project. They were based on an animation process that was superimposed on the originally allocated space. You can’t even describe the mats in terms of traditional, two-dimensional drafting, what more building them. Instead, MAC creates the shapes of the mats with stereo lithographic apparatus, a process commonly used in car design. Molds of the mats are made in a vat containing a resin that hardens under the intense light of two computer-controlled laser beams.

An essence of sensuous body consciousness oozes from nearly every object in the store. Hand mirrors, display cases, mats and built-in seatings are wrapped in a translucent skin that reveals a dark skeleton whose "bones" are handcarved out of lightweight black foam. Functionally, the bones provide the fleshy polyurethane forms with a strong structural support. Aesthetically, they evoke a sense of mystery and set up a play of light and dark, seen and half-seen.

Look Ma, It’s MoMa!

The eagerly awaited cocktail opening of the Museum of Modern Art’s new SoHo Design Store was set for Sept. 12. Needless to say, it didn’t happen as soon as Mayor Giuliani gave the "all clear" signal for business to resume below 14th Street. Now up and running, the glowing, colorful retail space is merchandised with an intriguing collection that’s heavy on home accessories, furniture, lighting and design publications.

Labelled by its creators, 1100 Architect’s Juergen Riehm, as a "supermarket of high design," MoMa doesn’t want to come across as being elitist, and it does not want to project a museum environment. Located on the high-traffic corner of Spring and Crosby Streets, the new store demonstrates its openness as you walk in – doors are sited on both sides of the corner, carving out an entrance space that’s like an extension of the sidewalk.

With SoHo as a destination for consumers who understand good modern design, it was only logical for MoMa Design Store to branch out into the area. The logic still holds, despite the uncertain near-term outlook for tourist-based SoHo businesses. Many people still don’t know it’s safe to go into downtown Manhattan.

Occupying the ground and the cellar levels of a landmarked cast-iron building, the two-story, 1,000-square-meter SoHo store is double the size of its 53rd Street sibling, with an expanded inventory including more personal and home accessories.

With this store, MoMa forges head-on with longtime modernist retailers Moss and Palazzetti, as well as nearby upstarts like the Apartment. The museum already seems to have shed its Midtown skin and adopted a SoHo aesthetic. The architects were also responsible for renovating the museum’s uptown Design Store and creating neighborhood outlets for J. Crew and Shiseido.

1100 Architect transformed the space into a creative retail environment that works respectfully with the structure. They wrapped the ceiling and one wall on both levels with a translucent polyvinyl membrane that’s backlit like an enormous lightbox. Even from the street, the glow of the interior sets it apart, drawing the attention of passersby. Original cast-iron columns are sheathed with translucent sandblasted glass, also backlit for luminosity.

The design merges the austere white light and standardized shelving of the suburban big box and a playful industrial-design sensibility. Leaving the maple floor and exterior brick walls alone, Riehm has stocked the space with display units that look like a series of oversize abstract toys, monochromatic riffs on the Kartell carts the store sells.

The units are wheeled Formica boxes onto which opaque or transparent acrylic cubes can be stacked. The pale palette makes every product stand out as if under a spotlight. Clear Aalto vases glow their greenest, the popular rainbow-colored Wave glasses sparkle like gemstones, even an iridescent umbrella arrangement looks like a still life.

At ground level, custom vitrines showcase an array of gift items and classic modern wares. An open concrete and glass sculptural staircase draws customers down to the cellar level, where prints, books and furniture are sold. The staircase itself is cantilevered and independently supported. On the lower level, a bookstore has an inviting seating area for browsing, while classic modern furniture, lighting and accessories are displayed in niches of an open grid of shelves along the backlit wall.

These days, it can be awfully hard to tell a gallery from a shop. Moss has sealed display vitrines inside and Frank Gehry’s corrugated-cardboard chairs in the window. Clothing boutique Kirna Zabete has white walls and showcases by Nick Dine.

Doubling the uptown store’s floor space gives MoMa an opportunity to sell much more furniture (Herman Miller, Vitra, and Cassina), a category seemingly already overrepresented in the area.

In the basement – saved from dungeon gloom by a massive void and a sculptural stair, a cantilevered spine in tough-but-sensual rock-studded concrete – there’s a glamorous backlit wall, stocked with skeletal chairs and mod clocks, plus a runway arrangement of more fetish objects, including a newly reissued Marcel Breuer collapsible chair.

The neighboring competition isn’t particularly worried – the idea of a downtown modernist strip seems to suit everyone. Beyond competitive spirit, MoMa’s move downtown reveals something museum administrators have known for a long time: Their stores are moneymaking destinations and not necessarily just for museum-goers.

Today’s museum store enters the retail environment somewhere between the big box and the boutique, offering a high-culture imprimatur to a variety of products – mass-produced, artisanal, and museum-created. Such retailers stress the uniqueness of what they sell, but that is often more a matter of the mix of high and low than of products you can’t get anywhere else.

A limited survey of modern-contemporary museums’ online offering reveals a surprisingly similar mix of objects by Philippe Starck, Alvar Aalto, and a raft of lesser-known Scandinavians along with mugs, note cards, and posters bearing the collections’ popular works.