UNIFORMLY DIFFERENT
Aesop founder Dennis Paphitis decided on a design-led strategy for the Australian botanical hair and skincare brand whereby each of its 177 stores and 84 counters has its own individual style, writes
The lure of e-commerce’s instant gratification and convenience has made it more important than ever that physical stores make shopping a memorable experience.
While many have turned to creating a consistent formula of exclusive materials and artworks, until now, surprisingly few have followed the example of the Australian botanical hair and skincare brand Aesop, which has created different interiors for each of its 177 stores and 84 department store counters in 20 countries. There are nine stores and four counters in Hong Kong. The first shop opened in 2005 in Lyndhurst Terrace and the latest, in the IFC mall, opened on the cusp of the company’s 30th anniversary this year.
What once seemed like an idiosyncratic design-led strategy driven by Aesop founder Dennis Paphitis’ love of craftsmanship and culture now seems like a creative alternative to the uniformity of today’s retail landscape.
“No one else would think about designing a building or a house to suit any or every context. I think it is natural to consider the floor plan, streetscape and wider community for each space,” Paphitis says. “This approach also enables a different scope and landscape, which is good for the architect because it challenges them rather than having a signature look.”
This translates into a serene, minimalist black and white store on Kyoto’s Kawaramachi Street, where Shinichiro Ogata of Tokyo-based Simplicity design studio has suspended rows of Aesop’s trademark ambercoloured bottles on their sides
– a nod to traditional Japanese calligraphic scrolls.
In Taiwan, Aesop’s store on Zhongxiao East Road, designed in collaboration with Taipei firm CJ Studio, features a monochrome palette with a dark terrazzo stone floor that curves up the walls, pure white shelving, and a domed ceiling.
In Paris’ Rue Veille du Temple, the compact 24 square metre store by French designers Ciguë sports polished off-white concrete interiors with bottles and jars perched on 427 tiny steel caps embedded in the wall.
“We wanted to reflect the city and the street with this sort of industrial product,” Ciguë co-founder Hugo Haas says.
“We also liked the idea of the caps levitating and so played around with the different sizes, rusting some and darkening others to create a strong graphic pattern on the wall.”
In the past three decades, the brand has fine-tuned the challenges derived from collaborating with different designers on relatively small spaces.
“Every single shop is aesthetically different, but the functional requirements are always constant,” Paphitis says. “We need water, a cash desk, a seat and storage. These parts do not vary across our stores.”
He also asks designers to think creatively about the existing “attributes”– whether there may be old floor tiles or brickwork – while finding innovative ways to display products.
“It just feels less pretentious to save something, if you can,” the former Melbourne hairdresser says. Even at that early stage, his eye for design was obvious, with his hair salon evoking a serene sanctuary and products packaged in plain pharmaceutical-style bottles.
Jeremy Barbour of New York’s Tacklebox Architecture admits he was surprised to find himself invited to Australia after his studio was approached by Paphitis to pitch a design for a temporary kiosk in New York’s Grand Central station.
“From the minute I stepped onto their home turf the conversations were about art, literature and food – everything other than their product,” says Barbour. “Other clients sell who they are, but we had a lot of conversations about what they have an affinity for, so we didn’t have a contrived surface reading of their values. Instead, we got an idea about what is at the core of the brand.”
Barbour’s studio went on to design one of Aesop’s most famous stores, the newspaperinspired store in Nolita (North of Little Italy) featuring walls clad with 2,800 copies of The New York Times. The studio is also responsible for the recently opened branch in San Francisco, with interiors inspired by the stills used to produce whiskey in the same area.
Other designers who have worked with the brand say that although Paphitis is notoriously fastidious about design details, in general they enjoy considerable creative freedom.
Although renowned creatives, such as Studio Ilse and Torafu Architects, design some of Aesop’s stores, the brand has a tradition of hiring young, emerging architects. In 2015, the brand launched “Taxonomy of Design”, a digital archive of its stores with profiles and film interviews with some of their designers, alongside details of materials and furnishings.
Approaching each space with a different design strategy is, however, not for the faint of heart. It is an expensive, higher risk strategy that flies in the face of traditional economies of scale. But the advantages extend beyond aesthetics to provide greater flexibility regarding reuse of building and decorative materials. Many of Aesop’s interiors incorporate vintage or salvaged items, such as sinks, taps and tiling, in novel ways.
For example, at Chicago’s Bucktown store, architecture and design collaborative Norman Kelley created a distinctive grid motif comprised of reclaimed Chicago common bricks.
At Aesop’s newest Hong Kong store in the IFC mall, Paphitis says he challenged the newly established local design studio Mlkk to investigate recyclable materials for a design that could be easily updated. After research into regional timbers, the team of young designers came up with an organic, Chinese eucalyptus, cork-lined interior featuring a curvilinear pebble wash counter and shelving inspired by traditional local craftsmanship.
“Cork is a very sustainable, humble material that offers a contrast to the shininess of the mall, but at the same time we also wanted a design that would offer a high-end aesthetic quality,” Mlkk co-founder Kian Yam says. Yam worked as an in-house architect at Aesop before cofounding the studio.
Although Paphitis is no longer involved in day-to-day management of the design of each store, he remains a key strategic creative force.
“As digital grows we can be even more selective in our stand-alone stores as the purpose of them extends to include other things like customer events,” Aesop chief executive Michael O’Keeffe says.
“Our customers replenish stocks online but go into the stores because of the relationships. It is not just about the product and experience of design; it also extends to service with a human touch. Digital will become the connector between all of this.”
Every shop is aesthetically different but the functional requirements are always constant DENNIS PAPHITIS, AESOP FOUNDER