WHEN LESS IS MORE IS NO LONGER ENOUGH
I wonder how English architect John Pawson feels about the transformation of his most iconic project, the Calvin Klein flagship on Madison Avenue, at the hands of brand creative director Raf Simons and artist Sterling Ruby. The city’s most admired minimalist interior has become a riotous retail playhouse. Grids of construction scaffolding and stage lights have been inserted into the wide-open sales floors, beige wall-to-wall carpeting has been laid over the polished concrete floors, and brightly-colored formica blocks and cylinders have replaced the low, altar-like stone and wood plinths. Most dramatically, the interiors throughout have been painted a screaming canary yellow. When seen from across Madison Avenue at dusk, the stately limestone building’s windows gleam demonically.
It’s an audacious rebranding, an attempt to lure a younger, hipper customer and to bring the store’s architecture in step with Simons’ fevered pop culture imagination. This season’s clothes, separates with clean silhouettes executed in vernacular fabrics (denim, houndstooth, plastic, lace)
with bold graphic details (racing stripes, appliques, feathers),
and paired with structured accessories (cowboy boots, boxy clutches, doctors bags), have a fresh, funky feeling, like costumes for space age hippies. The new stores gives them a suitable stageset.
But I can’t help but remember the old store. It takes a lot of skill, in both design and construction, to execute a convincing minimalist interior, and Pawson’s was thrillingly austere. The floors seemed endless and seamless, light fittings and hardware were brilliantly concealed, the store’s narrow staircase was tucked between two full-height piers, and daylight washed over everything, highlighting the soft finishes. This was a Madison Avenue flagship store that didn’t try to entertain an off-the-sidewalk customer; it was a temple to restraint.
The cultural pendulum is swinging now from principle to feeling, from monochrome to color, from luxury to vulgarity. But I wonder if defacing every surface of the old store was the best strategy. The connecting stair, whose treads have been covered in black enamel, still surprises with its narrow proportions and mysteriously slow reveal of the second floor. Its slender square steel handrail, painted yellow, remains singularly elegant. The bright colors and street savvy of the new design catch the eye but don’t hold the imagination for long. When viewed from the mezzanine, the web of scaffolding, strings of lights, and toy-like props on the ground floor feel like party decorations. The architecture of the old store – its high walls, open floors and slowly unfolding views – quietly reasserts itself.
Image courtesy of Calvin Klein.