The ‘retail apocalypse’, a technology-driven blight, is leaving ailing high streets and zombie malls in its wake. Amazon, Alibaba and other e-commerce players, large and small, have transformed shopping into a sofa-based scroll and shoot. Well that’s what the headlines say. But this trail of disruption is not indiscriminate. You can outsmart it and outmaneuver it, even if that sometimes requires a speculative trip to Mars.
Late last year, SKP, China’s leading luxury department store operator, opened SKP-S, a smaller though still sizeable satellite to its brand-rich Beijing mothership. The new store’s ground-floor window display features a wide-screen tableau, not of designer desirables, but of nodding electric sheep and comic book heroic space farmers, buffeted by solar winds. The ‘future farm’ installation – the work of tyro South Korean eyewear brand Gentle Monster – continues inside. Where you might expect the heady scent and bustling aisles of the beauty department, sheep are being cloned on clinically clean production lines.
By the time you get to the store’s third floor, heading skywards on infinity escalators, you are through the airlock of an apparently long-established Martian outpost where veteran terraformers pass on advice to their identical clones; landing modules and Martian buggies are parked up in red dirt; and a dome, apparently 3D-printed in the same Martian dust (actually painstakingly formed in gypsum concrete), offers views of our solar system and beyond (rendered by Australian studio Artists in Motion). There are also Nike trainers, Champion sweatshirts and Swatch watches, but they are housed in alcoves offa 2001: A Space Odyssey-style dichroic glass tunnel.
この記事は Wallpaper の March 2020 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は Wallpaper の March 2020 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、8,500 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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A Kind of Magic
Demna's breathtaking couture collection takes centre stage at Balenciaga's newly renovated couture salons in Paris
Building Site
Sun Tower, China, by Open Architecture
Circular Approach
Repurpose clothing initiative, by Oliver Spencer
CITY
Seoul's unique mix of culture, art and style goes global, thanks to an unstoppable new wave of dynamic creatives
RESTORATION KINGS
Laplace for Hauser & Wirth Paris
CARDBOARD CUTOUTS
'Box' furniture, by Max Lamb, for Gallery Fumi
URBAN BOLTHOLE
Pacaembu House, Brazil, by Arthur Casas
SURREALIST DREAMS
Weird and wonderful works to wake up to
CROWNING GLORY
15-step scalp treatment, by Eco Jardin by Park Jun
WEARABLE ART
Jewellery collection, by Lynda Benglis, for Loewe