THE_STORE

I was told years ago that retail was dead. I agreed and said the high street was finished. But the truth is more specific: retail is emotionally dead. It has become a hollow performance.

When I was at Haeckels, I remember obsessing over a pink, organic tiled floor we installed. The second the photos were finished and people started walking on it, the tiles stained. It showed the immediate, honest friction of life. I once spent an entire afternoon with a bottle of Tipp-Ex trying to paint the grout back to white because the reality of the footfall was frustrating me. We design these spaces to look perfect for a fleeting moment or a picture, then we panic when they show signs of human use. We cover the wear.

Look at the beauty pop-ups currently clogging our cities. It is an industry of pure waste. Thousands of pounds are spent on furnishings that exist for a forty-eight-hour window. Where do those giant plastic product mock-ups go when the brand moves on? The cheap merchandise, the acrylic counters, the vinyl wraps. They are built for a single post and then hauled to a landfill. It is a grotesque, temporary theatre.

I want to build destruction into the physical room. The original reference for 12_things was a morgue. I wanted to lean into the idea that retail is dead, but I also wanted the act of commerce to be the thing that kills it. In the conflict between art and commerce, I wanted the transaction to be the weapon.

The packaging is the architecture. The perfume is kept inside reclaimed bank vault drawers that make up the very walls of the shop. When you buy a perfume bottle, you take the drawer with you. You leave a hole, a physical emptiness in the wall. The store is limited by its own nature; the more it sells, the more the room disappears. It is designed to collapse in on itself. It is a commentary on a world that consumes until there is nothing left to see.

We have spent decades being told that retail is about accessibility and convenience. I disagree. Retail is about the burden of the search and the joy of the discovery.

I was certain that you shouldn’t see the packaging before you buy it. Most perfume sells itself on the romance of the box and the lid. This is likely the only perfume store in the world where you walk in and cannot see a single product. You cannot scroll. You cannot compare. You have to want it. You have to have a conversation with another human being just to smell it. But every effort is rewarded…

As a kid, I was obsessed with special edition DVD box sets. I didn’t always watch the TV shows; I just loved the depth and singularity of the object. Some had hidden disks, physical keys, and secret stories tucked into the lining. They were rewards for being a devotee. I want these products to feel the same. The packaging is a heavy, physical event - a celebration of all we have been trained to strip out in the pursuit of e-commerce growth.

The store needs to be a reward. It has to offer an experience that a screen cannot simulate. It has to reward the effort of leaving your house and participating in the physical world. This is the only place you can smell the entire collection and the only place to buy them in this format.

The store at 198 Hackney Road is open until 15 December.