Apparel April 2019 Apparel May 2019 issue | Page 49

the store may have a café with gourmet treats
and signature beverages or a counter retailing
beautiful flowers.
The store may host activities from time to time
like pop-ups showcasing garments of different
designers. Or there may be an artisan at work
such as a weaver weaving traditional textiles
at a handloom located within the atmospheric
Spice Market store in Jew Town, Fort Kochi,
showing how the textile is crafted and thus giving
customers knowledge of the effort that goes into
handcrafting a particular textile.
LOCATION CALLS
A store standing in an arty or heritage precinct,
a hip quarter, and within it in an erstwhile
mansion, mill or warehouse or a popular or
upscale mall certainly gives it a special charm
and an advantage.
Every city has more than one such locale such
as Kala Ghoda, a heritage precinct in South
Mumbai that has steadily revived its buzz and the
presence of several garment shopping stores,
from the multi-designer Ensemble to boutiques of
Shaina N C, Ritu Kumar, Sabyasachi Mukherjee,
Varun Bahl, Shantanu & Nikhil, and more recently
Rahul Mishra and Kunal Rawal, making it a
destination for designer labels.
At times, a particular precinct may hold interest
for specialised shopping such as Shahpur Jat in
New Delhi which is popular for bridal shopping
even as it has a spectrum of apparel stores.
Stepping into a quiet passageway and then
into the Abhinav Mishra store—where the pre-
wedding and wedding garments with the right
touch of surface ornamentation are tastefully
displayed—ushers the bride into a calm space
that makes for ease of shopping.
FEATURE
THE DESIGN OF GARMENT
STORES LARGELY DEPENDS
ON THE STYLE AND RANGE OF
GARMENTS ON DISPLAY.
ORGANISED DISPLAYS
The design of garment stores largely depends
on the style and range of garments on display.
While leisure or casual wear may be displayed
in a stylish way, designer garments call for a
unique play of elements to create a luxurious
space along with organised and easy-to-browse
displays. For instance, if a designer boutique
has garments for men and women, spanning
collections for different occasions, then it calls for
neat demarcation of the collections while keeping
a common underlying design thread through the
different spaces.
A case illustrating this point is the aesthetically
designed Nivedita Saboo Couture luxury villa
at a leafy lane in Kalayani Nagar, Pune, and the
Nivedita Saboo Couture flagship store at Juhu
APPAREL
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May 2019
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