Modern heritage | IR News

Modern heritage

Posted Date: 21/08/2012

By Carla Bridge

For brand new fashion retailer, Laundrie, creating a new brand was not just about establishing a name, but also a modern shopping experience for its customers.

Set to become an urban streetwear chain with stores also planned for the mainland, Laundrie is the brainchild of Victorian-based fashion wholesalers, who like many others in the business, have chosen to branch out with a more vertical model.

With one store already trading at Elizabeth Mall in Hobart’s CBD in Tasmania, a second Tasmanian site in Launceston was selected - a former Colorado store, on the corner of Brisbane and St John streets.

The property is heritage listed, meaning the store needed to be re-fitted without making any visual changes to the heritage front, with the exception of rebranding and refurbishing the existing works.

In addition to refurbishing, the store received a new floor, electrical wiring and lighting, repainted walls clad with a timber finish, fresh joinery and fixtures, and new signage.

Designed by ACRD and fitted out by 3fold Resources, the main challenge was maintaining the existing design of the building.

“Our approach was to not highlight the features, just simply paint them out in our finishes so they felt like they formed part of the design,” says Antony Hoffman of ACRD.

“By taking this approach, some of the building features, being the large ceiling cornices, wall and architraves, and floor skirtings now sit well in the overall design and have faded into the background because we haven’t highlighted them.

“We had to work with some tight spaces that had to be maintained.

“The other challenge has been around external signage - with no lit signs allowed we have used old style awnings to create character and bring a different look to what is a modern brand and store design,” he said.

Despite the building’s heritage, Laundrie’s Launceston store is in no way dated.

According to Aldo Yee Chong, business development manager at 3fold, the look and feel that forms the Laundrie store is based around contemporary construction.

“This idea comes from taking typical construction materials, but putting a modern twist to them in the way they form and the way in which we finish them.”

Yee Chong says the highlights of the Launceston store are around the finishes, namely the wall panelling and feature lighting, which include long steel tube light fittings to the steel clad counter and the combination of hardwood and plywood wall panels.

“We wanted to take the base construction materials and make them modern,” says Yee Chong.

“So we have used the colour of concrete as a wall accent colour and taken the colour of plywood and hardwood and made modern timber veneer panels in two tone colour to give a back drop effect to the walls.

“This is combined with raw steel, which has been rubbed back to give a blackened look to create the finish for the counter and fixtures.”

Given Laundrie’s uni-sex, multi-branded product offering Hoffman described the design was stripped back, with inspiration taken from Japan.

“The stores in Japan that are uni-sex designer brands take on a very cool, clean, look where finishes are used in a clever way to create a real style.

“The approach for Laundrie was very much the same - we wanted to create a really cool, comfortable space that was inviting to shop in, while providing a design solution that to the customer was really comfortable and not overpowering.”

* This feature first appeared in the April/May 2012 edition of Inside Retail Magazine. For more stories like this, subscribe to Inside Retail Magazine's bi-monthly print edition here

Keywords: laundrie , fashion, clothing, heritage

Comments:

Wednesday, August 22, 2012 by Max

We faced the same dilemma looking at sites in Hobart and decided that due to inflexibility around external livery it was not conceivable for our brand - we waited years to find a suitable non heritage listed site.

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