Jewellery (jewelry)

By Rosemary Feitelberg The last thing Raf Simons wanted for Jil Sander’s new Howard Street store in Manhattan was to plop an art installation in the middle of it.

Instead, with the help of artist Germaine Kruip, the Jil Sander creative director has created an ever-changing space with a wall of rotating mirrored panels and three mirrored dressing room cubes that continuously reflect the natural light streaming in from the boutique’s bank of windows. In this flexible environment, shoppers can’t help but see reflections of themselves at varying angles. The idea of movement appealed to Simons, who was leaving his retail imprint for the first time.

Simons said he wasn’t driven by what other designers are doing, but was motivated to work with Kruip on the 6,300-square-foot space. Two years ago at the Armory art show, the designer was drawn to one of her pieces, “Counter Composition II,” a mirrored mobile that disturbs daily light, and bought it on the spot. As it turned out, she used to live in Antwerp, Belgium, as he does now, and they knew each other through mutual acquaintances. His purchase, which now rests in his Antwerp home, borrows from De Stijl, a Dutch artistic movement led by Theo van Doesburg.

“Everything for me is about light and movement, bringing a certain energy without being wild. Everything has to be harmonious sliding into each other,” he said. “This is not the typical way of showing product in a store. The challenge was to see how we could deal with that in a different way.”

Rather than have shoppers see everything at a glance, the store is designed to gradually string them past the six mannequins standing single file in the center of the main floor, toward Kruip’s rotating reflecting wall of mirrored panels and up the marble stairs to peruse the black racks with perfectly appointed ensembles beneath Serge Mouille’s black mollusk-shaped lighting fixtures.

Creating a space with equal parts openness, privacy and loads of light is no easy feat, but Simons appears to have pulled it off. “We wanted to see how we could bring a certain intimacy to things,” the designer said.

Three changing rooms, which look more like art installations, are interspersed in the center of the room and bounce light around the second floor. So much so that the interplay has even surprised Simons, who said he was at a loss for words when he first walked into the store on Wednesday. It opens to the public today.
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