Every retail experience is drawn from a story—this optical store is developed as a creative dialogue between I’m D’sign and the experimental wing I’mX, signalling the dawn of the digital age. Its vision for the future comes live with the spatial experience that brings a monochrome edge with an out-of-the-world glare speaking for the new, while a transcendent appeal holds onto the stature of this renowned brand in India. The age, heritage and establishment of the brand get a future-ready facelift that comes to reassure its connection to the customers—both old and new.
In a time where digital spaces are rising to fame, the purpose of retail is being questioned and this brand is here to answer—to stay and transform with the time—to look back and forward at the same time in the language of design. The space flashes an overtone of silver floating about the caviar base that take us back and forth the timeline of styles. The hand-cut black granite of the floor, the hand-textured paints of the wall and the soft vaulted silhouettes running in between, come to talk about the nostalgia of the past, while the details tell otherwise. Mannequin heads sculpted in rings of clear glass, hexagon displays stacked in an edgy stainless steel and more mimic the UFO forms to make the space give a figment of imagination.
With a character that celebrates the past and the future at the same time, silver metal becomes an important part of the material palette. From its original identity of precious metal, it has branched into a number of meanings—that now enters this contemporary retail context to project the picture of future, space travel and progress altogether. From the shiny, zipped-up suits of the world’s first space crew, to Paco Robanne’s metal dress, it became evident that silver was the colour we would all be covered in once we’d be accustomed to zero gravity. With such a statement, this project carries the cultural stance of the time gone by, to imagine a future where retail experiences open up a different dimension. These deeply-rooted attributions to the moodboard of the space come in line with the optical merchandise of the brand to immerse people into the environment and turn a transactional act into an experience of discovery that engages their senses with the brand’s retail character.
In short, It’s a playful, edgy retail store for eyewear that plays with the idea of frames and layers through sculptural installations that define the visual and experiential character of the space.
