Following previous boutique locations across Tokyo, Isabel Marant ups the ante and opens a flagship store in what’s arguably the city’s ultimate hub of luxury retail—Aoyama. Nestled in the neighbourhood’s maze of streets and alleyways, the Paris-based fashion house has teamed up with Japanese artist Yutaka Sone to make a bold architectural statement. Dubbed Yellow House, and it’s instantly visible where the name comes from, the store’s façade is in fact an installation of sorts. It’s inspired by the artist’s body of work presented at his Power of Ten and Obsidian solo exhibitions, held respectively in 2017 and 2018 at the Sifang Art Museum in Nanjing. For both showcases, Sone explored the properties of obsidian, a natural volcanic glass which forms when erupted lava is rapidly cooled. The material has a unique internal structure and has been used in all kinds of tools since the Stone Age, and accordingly, the artist has followed the logic of obsidian shapes.
Occupying 200 sqm. (2,153 sq.ft.) spread across two floors of a modern office building erected in 1981, the interior design, created in collaboration with the Isabel Marant in-house design team, is dotted with references to the highly artistic façade. The ground floor sees dark terrazzo flooring, whitewashed walls and an exposed ceiling overlaid with shard-like light installations. Furnishings comprise an elongated recessed shelving unit, cast concrete displays, while apparel pieces are showcased on sleek steel clothing racks, and all interspersed by Sone’s colourful ‘obsidian’ sculptures. One floor up, the setting is similar albeit a tad more homey, featuring shelving units, appropriately backlit in yellow, a large sofa with fluffy cladding, suspended shelving units, a concrete cast display table and a single ‘obsidian’ sculpture in a soft pink hue, and last but not least, similar light installations. The new Isabel Marant flagship store carries the brand’s full range of women’s and men’s apparel, denim, accessories, bags, shoes. eyewear and jewellery, in addition to its Marant Etoile diffusion line.
Isabel Marant
5-9-8 Minami Aoyama (Aoyama)
Tokyo 107-0062
Telephone: +81 3 64273443
Daily 11am-8pm
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.
