Very few brick and mortar stores have established a global influence as 10 Corso Como in Milan. Founded in 1990 by former Elle Italia and Vogue Italia editor-in-chief Carla Sozzani, initially as a gallery space and bookshop, 10 Corso Como eventually featured a café and hotel, and is widely seen as the planet’s original concept store. Needless to say, it immediately struck a chord with the city’s discerning fashion and design demographics, and eventually a bigger audience worldwide, ambitiously opening up shop in far-flung places, such as Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai and New York City. Unfortunately, of all the aforementioned outposts, only two shops in the South Korean capital are still operational. Four years ago, leading Italian fashion entrepreneur Tiziana Fausti acquired the revered concept store with the intention to crank up its stature and expand once again.
The Bergamo-based entrepreneur started by expanding the 10 Corso Como premises to all four floors of the building where it was founded. Exhibition space The Gallery and the Project Room, a haven for tightly curated design pieces, vintage books and cult magazines, were inaugurated earlier this year, and now, a fully revamped ground floor retail space has been revealed. Designed by Fausti in collaboration with Milan-based interdisciplinary agency 2050+, the chosen aesthetic anticipates endless configurations and guises, and unsurprisingly, it’s very compatible with the two aforementioned spaces on the second floor which opened earlier this year. Additionally, a new steel-clad staircase which connects the two floors has been inaugurated.
As said, the retail space sees a versatile interior design and features mobile and modular set-up devices—a new version of the pantograph tables and a series of clothes racks connected to winches, which can move vertically and horizontally in the space until they disappear completely between the ceiling beams. A series of specially commissioned furnishings by various international designers, such as Jesper Eriksson, Laurids Gallée, Odd Matter, Sam Chermayeff Office, and The Back Studio not only elevate the shopping experience, but also signal 10 Corso Como‘s ambition to become a platform for cultural and creative exchange. Eriksson created a counter made of complex black coal, while Gallée designed a polished metal structure paired with shelves crafted from upcycled resin plates.
Odd Matter designed two display tables and a cash desk which explore the use of recycled glass strands and alpha crystalline plaster, and Sam Chermayeff Office designed the jewellery display as a series of windows through which shoppers enter an exclusive and precious world. Last but not least, The Back Studio designed a lamp by assembling industrial pieces and hand-blown neon, a lightweight aluminium structure supporting a tubular of fiery red neon, and positioned inside the new metal staircase. The newly designed 10 Corso Como store stocks a wide range of tightly curated women’s and men’s items by leading fashion and lifestyle brands, such as Rick Owens, ASICS, Alaïa, Ginori 1735, Wandler, Juun.J and Marsèll. Mind you, sought after cult designer Phoebe Philo makes her debut at the store as an exclusive in the Italian market with pieces from her brand’s third edit, in addition to items of the previous two. © superfuture
10 Corso Como
Corso Como 10 (Brera)
20154 Milan
Telephone +39 02 29002674
Daily 10.30am-7.30pm
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