MAC Cosmetics has announced the redesign of its Spring Street store, in New York's SoHo, to be unveiled on Aug. 1, 2001.
The company says SoHo 2001 is the first in a series of experimental stores, which will run in tandem with the existing Modernist style store interiors. “Repetition of the same concept everywhere leads to blandness and dullness — like eating the same foods at every sitting,” said James Gager, MAC senior vp and creative director worldwide. “Our idea is to recharge the taste buds of MAC customers. We see our future stores working in a similar way to a fashion designer's collections. Each collection visibly comes from the same hand, but every season the line evolves to reflect the influences in the designer's head and of the times. We believe creativity thrives on change.”
“The new lab-style stores are intended to appeal to a more experimental customer and consequently will be located in cities where people are anticipating the next wave of ideas such as New York, Tokyo, London and Paris,” said Regis Pean, MAC's executive director of store design. “This new store is as much about how you feel inside the space as how it looks. Our target is to create a sensual experience and to trigger emotions with our design.”
According to the company's vividly descriptive statement, one of the main architectural elements in the store will be a skin-like, translucent floor, “which at times behaves like a magic carpet. At the rear of the space, it suddenly peels off the ground, ripples up into the air and snakes around the private make up consultation rooms.
“The 700-plus items sold in the store are not so much displayed in the traditional sense, rather they are embedded in soft fleshy mats — 18 different pewter-colored mats have been designed. They are spongy to the touch and glow from inside like mineral deposits. These tactile gem-like forms recess into jelly-like slabs of amber, which cover all the display counters.”
Hand mirrors, display cases, mats and seating are all designed “so you can see through their translucent soft outer 'skin'to the dark inner core or 'skeleton.'Buried at the heart of each of object is a series of hand carved 'bones'made from lightweight black foam.
“The unusual wave-like display mats couldn't be built in a traditional way. It would take a craftsman weeks to laboriously carve these convoluted shapes.” Instead MAC used what it called a cutting-edge design process called SLA (Stereo Lithographic Apparatus). “Watching objects take shape with SLA is like watching a scene from a sci-fi movie. They seem to form themselves, rising of their own accord out of a giant vat of what appears to be primordial goo. In fact, two computer-controlled laser beams work in tandem over the vat, hardening dots of resin as small as a 0.001 of an inch wide. Over several hours, a shape is built up particle by particle, layer by layer. In this way, just one MAC display mat takes the best part of a day to create.”
Freestanding lamps “look as if they are breathing.” The Globlow lamp, by a Swedish company called Snowcrash, inflates when it is switched on and deflates when it is switched off. “Its enormous head looks like a cross between a giant pillow and a mini-hot air balloon and is made of rip-stop nylon.” The lamp, more than decorative, provides an intense soft white light, good for make-up application stations. And lamps'tripod-type bases are designed to be easily moved around the store.
A second experimental store is due to open shortly, in the Ayoyama district of Tokyo. Future stores are planned in Paris and London. This is a global experiment.” said Gager, “Like throwing a pebble into the water, it's going to have a ripple effect in different places around the world.”