Jimmy Choo’s 34 Avenue Montaigne retail store in Paris is a highly secured vault, and its shoes the coveted gold. Jimmy Choo, best known for its glamorous shoes, accessories and perfumes, hit up the artist, designer and founder of Crosby Studios, Harry Nuriev, to shake things up by giving its store a complete makeover.
The result is something unlike anything else we’ve ever seen. The storefront already teases passers-by with what’s to come inside with its Jimmy Choo-branded safe deposit box-looking grey bricks. The window sports a draped golden curtain, a colour that is carried throughout the store, completely switching up the store’s appearance.
For Nuriev, this wasn’t just an opportunity to revamp the classic store space, but also a way to look into the DNA of the global luxury brand and plastering it front and centre for everyone to see. One way in which he did that was actually quite unconventional: bringing the back of the house to the front.
Jimmy Choo’s luxuriously suede-lined shoe boxes make up the walls of the store, having been given a grey makeover by Nuriev to resemble the countless safe boxes with stashed treasures that constitute a vault. “I love to transform and expose unusual items,” the artist explains. “For the colour palette of soft grey and gold I was inspired by early designs of the brand.”
The hints of gold may be minor on the shoe box but makes up a large part of the store’s decadent decor, finishings and furnishings. The entrance corridor and staircases have been given the golden treatment, as well as the “bullion” seating area taking up the metallic colour, both as a way to highlight Jimmy Choo’s high-end luxurious nature and to hint at the figurative gold stashed in-store.
Nuriev is known to do things a bit differently, challenging perceptions and transforming preconceived narratives. His novel store design demonstrates just that. An infinity mirror creates the illusion of a never-ending store, reflective of Jimmy Choo’s eternal style and endless offering.
The store also features a ‘secret room,’ further immersing visitors into this unprecedented experience. “I liked the idea of a secret room, or creating a room you are ‘not supposed’ to see as a retail space,” explains Nuriev.
By recontextualising the layout of a store, Nuriev has created for Jimmy Choo an intriguing narrative that brings visitors into the Jimmy Choo universe and flips traditional notions of shopping on its head. “The space he has created for our Montaigne pop up takes the seemingly utilitarian functionality of the store cupboard and spins it to become a glamourous and immersive experience,” explains Sandra Choi, the Creative Director at Jimmy Choo. She adds, “This is just the start of our creative conversation together and I am intrigued to see how it evolves.”
The temporary pop-up shop opened in line with Paris Fashion Week, and will run all the way through til December, before a new collaborative store between Harry Nuriev and Jimmy Choo will open in Japan.
More on Culted
See: Y-3 launches first-ever Adizero running apparel collection
See: We’ll never get tired of an MM6 Maison Margiela x SALOMON collab
