Following its longtime and huge following in neighbouring Japan, it looks like A.P.C. also resonates quite well with South Korea‘s savvy young crowds, and subsequently, the Paris-based fashion brand has stepped up its retail presence with an engaging new venue. You’d think fashion and lifestyle hub Seoul would’ve been picked as the ideal location for the brand’s very first café in the country, but instead it’s in Hwaseong. Situated just a 30-minute car drive south from Seoul, it’s an affluent satellite city where – as just about anywhere else in the country – shopping is taken very seriously. As its name already implies, the newly opened Café A.P.C. is a place where to sit back and relax over a hot drink and a bite during shopping, but in fact, it’s a hybrid format which also stocks select items from the brand’s elaborate apparel and lifestyle collections.
Café A.P.C. snugly sits on the second floor of Lotte, a leading department store whose newest multi-storey branch itself only opened last week. Designed by French architect and longtime collaborator Lauren Deroo, the venue occupies a pavilion-like structure with a dodecagonal shape in which a striking coffered ceiling with twelve wooden panels surrounds the stone-clad central service counter, using the natural wood that’s a signature element of many an A.P.C. boutique across the planet. Jean Touitou, the brand’s founder and creative director, and Pierre Touitou, his son and a celebrated chef in his own right, have collaborated on a concise menu listing regular coffee concoctions and pastries, including a number of family favourites, such as fennel tea, baked apple, apple crumble and A.P.C. logo letter cookies. As said, this is a hybrid space, and on the shelves patrons will also find branded coffee blends, T-shirts, bags, scented candles and other products.
Café A.P.C.
Lotte, Dongtanyeok-ro 160, Second Floor (Dongtan 4)
18478 Hwaseong
Telephone: +82 15770001
Daily 10.30am-8pm
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