19 October/20 October 2019 ★ FT Weekend 5Style
P
eter Marino’s first experience
of shopping was as a child,
tagging alongside his mother
on their occasional trips to
town from his home in
Queens, New York. In the 1950s, the
Manhattan department stores were
dark and labyrinthine, designed to slow
the senses and immerse the client in a
vast cocoon of schmutter. Time would
stop. The space would shrink. Marino
loathed it.
An acute claustrophobic, who still
rides a motorbike because he cannot
stand being trapped in a car, the experi-
ence was awful. “You couldn’t breathe.
All department stores had no light.
They didn’t want the lady to realise
she’d been there for two hours... and
the light of day was changing. I found
that so sinister. The more I learned
about department-store thinking, the
more I was repelled.”
Marino has spent the past 50 years
eviscerating those notions of the upscale
retail space. A lauded architect, and the
man predominantly responsible for the
look of every Chanel, Dior or Louis Vuit-
ton store you may have seen, we have
met on a scorching hot day in July at the
Bristol hotel in Paris; the 70-year-old is
dressed in his customary uniform of
leather biker trousers, boots, leather
biker cap and leather gilet. His look
recalls the doorman at an underground
fetish club but Marino’s claustrophobic
leanings are untickled by the heat.
Marino’s bizarro deportment is a
deceptive guise. He’s actually quite con-
ventional — long-term married to his
wife Jane and daddy to 28-year-old
daughter Isabelle. He graduated from
Cornell University, and founded his
architecture and design firm Peter
Marino Architect n New York, in 1978.i
That same year, Andy Warhol hired him
to create the third incarnation of his
famous Factory. In 1985, he was com-
missioned by the Pressman family,
then-owners of the US department store
Barneys. He designed 17 of their shops.
Further clients followed — Armani,
Calvin Klein and Chanel among them.
Today, he oversees some of the most
expensive shop fits in the business, and
quotes his projects as costing “in excess
of $1,000 [per] foot”.
Next week will see the unveiling of his
latest work: the transformation of the
Louis Vuitton flagship store on Bond
Street in London. A 17,435 sq ft empo-
rium of polished limestone, it features a‘Dark rooms are for sex.
Light rooms are for shopping’
Interview As the retail starchitect|
Peter Marino unveils his latest mega
store for Louis Vuitton, he reflects on
50 years of shop design. ByJo Ellison
double helix staircase, artwork by
James Turrell, and lots of man-friendly
sitting areas: chaps favour a chair while
waiting for their wives to shop, says
Marino, because it makes them feel
more comfortable. “They get nervous
on a sofa because it’s sociable and some-
body might talk to you.” The project has
taken more than 14 months, and cost a
multitude of millions, but its most spec-
tacular feature is its epic use of light.
“I want to breathe,” says Marino when
asked of the unifying themes of his
design. “The customers in the stores I do
are intelligent enough to understand
that if you look out of a window and see a
tree, it’s not going to keep you from buy-
ing a dress. That’s old schmutter-land
thinking: ‘Never get the customer dis-
tracted’. I’m a heavy believer in natural
light,” he says. “Dark rooms are for sex;
light rooms are for shopping.” He stops,
and looks at me. “I didn’t say that.”
Marino’s career has coincided with
the rise of the megabrand, and much
else has changed. How far have internet
shopping, global expansion and shifting
consumer habits changed the thrust of
his design?
“There are trends, but there are also
internal truths,” says Marino. “I cut my
teeth on Barneys in the ’80s, doing the
first women’s store, and there are a cou-
ple of things that still hold true.” Such
as? “Things like nine out of10 people
enter a store and turn to the right,
because nine out of ten people are right-
handed,” says Marino, before pointing
out that men travel more distinctly anti-
clockwise while women tend to “zigzag”
through a store. “So, as an architect,
your most important look is not what’sFrom above:
Peter Marino; a
rendering of the
Louis Vuitton
Store on New
Bond Street;
Place Vendôme
store in Paris
Jason Schmidtdirectly in front of you, it’s to the right.
And those are kind of eternal things
with shopping. As much as the brands
like to pretend the statistics have
changed, they haven’t.”
But the concept of the store has
changed. “The new trend is in pop-up
shops, which are experimental and are
supercool,” agrees Marino. “That’s a
new phenomenon in retail. And they are
so colourful, they’re off the charts. But
they’re ephemeral, and you can be
experimental, and this is a great new
freedom. What I do, with the budgets of
what I do, has to last for 10 years.”
Yet the Louis Vuitton store in London
last got a revamp nine years ago — even
that timeline is truncating. Marc Jacobs
was then artistic director at large of
Louis Vuitton. The whole creative team
has since shifted, and the store must
showcase a large and varied range ofthink of a store as being exclusionary,
except in the case of a jewellery store
which has locks on it, which is a little bit
intimidating. But I’ve studied dozens of
surveys and, in the end, if you do sur-
veys of 100 people, 70 would say they
find luxury stores very intimidating. So
what does that really mean?”
It means they can’t afford it.
“Thank you,” Marino nods. “Nothing
has changed in this regard. Whether
you’re exclusionary, or inclusionary. I
could leave the door open... and it
wouldn’t make any difference. All of the
surveys keep saying you have to be less
intimidating,” he rolls his eyes. “I usu-
ally just throw it back and say: You want
to be less intimidating? Why not have a
50 per cent markdown sale. You’ll be
amazed by how popular you’ll become.”
Even so, his stores are pretty popular:
contributing in no small way to the
brand’s “remarkable performance”cited by the LVMH group in its third-
quarter revenue report last week. “The
average time in a store is between 30
and 40 minutes,” says Marino, return-
ing to the numbers. “If it’s a flagship it’s
up to an hour and a half. If you look at
the Champs Élysées, it’s unbelievably
inclusive. I was there Saturday, there
were whole families with five, six kids.
They had no intention of buying any-
thing at Vuitton. They all had their little
Zara shopping bags, they were just like,
look, we’re at Vuitton, taking pictures,
being tourists, looking at the art.”
For Marino, shopping will always be a
sensual experience. Does he worry
about being extinguished by T-Mall, or
other internet innovations whereby
people will only shop from the comfort
of their own living rooms?
“Human reactions are very similar,”
he says. “Women still stroke the walls in
my Chanel store. It’s quilted leather and
they’re supposed to touch it. They’re
supposed to feel that this is a special
experience. You’re not going to get that
pressing a button of your computer.
“You know I don’t have a computer,”
he adds, when asked if he works in com-
petition with the web, or alongside it.
“I’m totally unaware of anything. I am
the original Luddite. There’s only a few
of us left,” he continues. “And I’m proud
of it. I want to go to the grave telling peo-
ple I’ve never had a computer.”
So, does he see the future of the store
as inviolable? “For sure. Because they
define the brands more than anything.
The fashion show comes and goes.
There’s so many of them, so much fash-
ion being thrown at you that the only
thing you can retain is the store. It’s still
the thing that best reflects the total val-
ues of the brand.”
And with that, he takes his leathers
and heads out. Into the light.Jo Ellison is the editor of ‘How To Spend It’‘The customers are
intelligent enough to
understand that if you lookout of a window and see a
tree, it’s not going to keepyou from buying a dress’
A
n estate agent on Mars might
have a few problems per-
suading Earthling buyers of
the red planetbeing an up-
and-coming neighbourhood.
It hasn’t got a great atmosphere (that’s
not a metaphor), it takes eight months
to commute there, and temperatures
drop to minus 140C. However, a new
exhibition, Moving to Mars t London’sa
Design Museum, explores what life —
and fashion — might be like there.
Designers have been intrigued by
space travel ever since the mid
1960s, when Pierre Cardin and André
Courrèges offered futuristic creations
such as plasticised mini-dresses and
space helmet-hats. Their attentions
were focused on the Moon, but now
Moving to Mars ncludes Christopheri
Raeburn’s Spring/Summer 2020 New
Horizons collection, which takes inspi-
ration from the adaptive/reactive
(make-do-and-mend) approach that
life on Mars could demand.
“Our whole brand focus is around
remaking, recycling and reducing,”
says Raeburn — and the pieces you will
see in the exhibition are made from
materials you might take with you to
another planet, such as parachutes, airbrakes and survival blankets. “It’s about
thinking what you can reuse instead of
virgin materials.”
Raeburn’s SS20 collection came about
when he met up with Xavier De Kestel-
ier, head of design technology and inno-
vation at architectural firm Hassell Stu-
dio, whose smoothly contoured MarsIn the 1960s,space travel had optimis-
tic associations — whereas now itcould
be seen as a last resort for escaping a
planet desecrated by humans. Is this sit-
uation a little... panic-inducing? Rae-
burn still sees room for romance and
excitement. “There is a positive mes-
sage to my collection — we are acutely
aware of our material use and impact on
Earth. We are looking proactively about
how we will act as we explore beyond
our planet. Technology, innovation and
responsible design can come together.”
Without wanting to bring any inter-
planetary fashionistasback down to
Earth with a bump, Raeburn’s designs
won’t actually offer practical necessities
such as breathing apparatus. That might
be provided by the NDX-1 Mars suit, the
first spacesuit designed specifically for
Mars, which also features in the show.
However, as Raeburn says of items
such as a roomy hooded top and shorts
printed with a Nasa photo of the mar-
bled reds and browns of the Martian
surface: “It’s important to be playful. It
would be a shame if humans went to
Mars just wearing grey.”‘Moving to Mars’, Design Museum, London,
until 23 February 2020What to wear on Mars
Arts |A new exhibition explores what life — and fashion — on the red planet might look like.Carola Longinvestigates
Above: SS20 ‘New Horizons’ collection by RaeburnHabitat appears in the exhibition. They
worked together on the spring collec-
tion as well as on garments that were
made especially for the show. A copper-
coloured jacket made from a survival
blanket will come in a variety of adult
and child sizes, and features in the exhi-
bition for visitors to try on.p ro d u c t s, i n c l u d i n g N i c o l a s
Ghesquière’s womenswear, Virgil
Abloh’s menswear and Francesca
Amfitheatrof’s fine jewellery. Marino’s
solution has been to create a gallery-like
space with neutral backdrops against
which a range of products are displayed.
“I’m an architect paid out of advertis-
ing budget,” says Marino, who is soft
-spoken, easy-going and funny. “So my
work, like advertising, is built on the
statistic that of the four people who
enter the shop three will leave without
having bought anything. The point of
my doing a beautiful store is that, aspi-
rationally, those three people will return
and become one of the purchasers next
time. But it’s not about pure material-
ism either, because it’s a sense of beauty,
of art combining with fashion, and the
hundreds of hours that go into these
fashion collections. And people respond
to it. They really do.”
In a world obsessed with experience,
Marino’s stores are big on feels. But ask
him whether luxury stores have become
more inclusive, and he bats away the
question. “It’s funny, because I neverOCTOBER 19 2019 Section:Weekend Time: 10/201917/ - 17:53 User:andrew.higton Page Name:WKD5, Part,Page,Edition:WKD, 5, 1