If you ask us, good retail is all about reinvention, and that’s exactly what The Shop at Bluebird has done. Well, it has been doing so since its inception twelve years ago, constantly adapting to the sign of the times with appealing offerings for a discerning female demographic. But as of late, the concept store has reinvented itself on another level, relocating from its original digs on King’s Road to rather grand new premises in London‘s buzzing Covent Garden shopping district. Occupying a former coach hall, the new store measures 15,000 sq.ft. (1,394 sqm.) set across three galleried floors. The listed building has been fully redeveloped to meet modern standards, but still sees plenty of architectural details that reference the past. New York City-based architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox not only supervised the transformation master plan of the popular Covent Garden shopping zone, but also gifted Carriage Hall, as the new home of The Shop at Bluebird is called, its most striking architectural feature: the inner courtyard’s glass roof.
The modern intervention allows in floods of daylight to permeate the entire premises. The interior design, created by London-based agency Dalziel & Pow, presents a playful mosaic of materials, styles, and entire settings that allude to the sense of wandering around treasure-filled bazaar. A restaurant and roof terrace will open on the top floor in the summer, allowing shoppers to recharge in between splurge sessions. Blink Brow Bar, Italian lifestyle brand Fornasetti and the Avery Perfume Gallery all have dedicated spaces within the store. A wall of artworks is featured on the first floor, curated exclusively by William Ling from the Fashion Illustration Gallery. What’s on the shelves? The brand mix at The Shop at Bluebird obviously remains very much on point, mixing established women’s brands with more niche counterparts from across the planet, and currently sees names such as Chloé, Forte Forte, Alexander McQueen, Mira Mikati, 3.1 Phillip Lim, and Projekt Produkt.
The Shop at Bluebird
29 Floral Street (Covent Garden)
London WC2E 9DP
Telephone: +44 20 73513873
Mon-Sat 10-7
Sun 12-6
Publishers Note
Just to be clear – superfuture® is a design blog and not a political commentator. No surprise there. The scope of our content has always been global and borderless, however that can often mean covering projects in countries where we will not agree with the politics or actions of those countries. In a world that’s as screwed up as ever right now, the focus of our support is to those designers, architects and other creatives who aim to make the world a more liveable one – as opposed to people that try their hardest to destroy it. So if a project hits our desk and we like it based on its design credentials, we may choose to publish regardless of its location or creators nationality. superfuture® has always been inclusive and hopes for all current wars, aggression, violence, hate and extremism to end.
