Our island's oldest multi-label fashion store is finally in the heart of Orchard Road. It is a welcome respite from the many over-busy luxury stores on retail's main drag
An unidentified, slanted entrance to the new Club 21 store
A merchandise installation within a globular frame to greet shoppers
For close to thirty years, Club 21, the multiple-label store, not the retail company, has stayed put in the Four Season Hotel. Most millennial shoppers—and younger—only know this bifurcated space that is the men's store on one side and the women's on the other. In recent years, mini Club 21 boutiques have occupied units vacated by other brands in The Shopping Gallery at the more accessible voco Orchard (the former Hilton Hotel), but the stores have remained in that (upper) part of Orchard Road, bordered by Cuscaden Road and Orchard Boulevard. They sit there, in their own retail oasis of atas exclusivity, a tabernacle of the swanky, cared for by cold custodians, away from the horde. Until now.
It was hailed as good news when it was announced that Club 21's latest store would be situated in the middle of Orchard Road, specifically on Bideford Road, at the spot where the Thong Sia (distributor of Seiko watches) building once stood. The choice of Bideford Road, named after the port town in Devon, south-west England, perhaps continues with Club 21's preference of not wanting to be on Orchard Road itself. The site of the store maintains another locational tradition: ensconced in hotels, now at the COMO Metropolitan, only the second in Asia after Bangkok. The hotel is part of the COMO Orchard complex described as an "immersive experience building", owned by Club 21's founder Christina Ong, the almost deific retail and hospitality doyenne behind the COMO Group.
While not large space, the new Club 21 feels spacious
Full-length windows bring in the verdant street-side into the largely hard-edged space—a first for a Club 21 store
From Orchard Road, it is about 200 metres away or eight minutes by foot from the Apple store. If you Grabbed there, you could actually be dropped off very near the entrance of Club 21. At street level, Como Orchard does no stand out. There is no signage to tell you what building or address you have arrived at. The way into Club 21 is through an entrance further down Bideford Road, through glass doors set within thick, red-tiled frame. As it sits on a slight slope, the entrance does not appear level, and is, in fact, asymmetrical, skewed. Again, there is nothing upfront that announces the name of the entity or the nature of its business. Its secret-address-in-the-open has a neo-Japanese trade identification convention about it. We can't say that (and the fact that it's street-fronting) is not the appeal. If you need to give instructions, just say: Find the red doorway.
Inside, a clothier to the cognoscenti immediately greeted us. And greeted, they did—a chorus of hellos. Before we could breathe in the smell of newness, a friendly chap approached us, and said, with appreciable eagerness,"may I show you around?". An unavoidable once-over suggested that the store—two stories—is not nearly as large as the original at the Four Seasons Hotel (both sides combined). It would not be hard to navigate. We did not need a guided tour, but it was hard to turn away amiability, so we accepted. Club 21 is not exactly known for its personable service or its infectious warmth. This antipodal personality of the new space and the prospect of discovery are to be enjoyed.
Greys of textural variation help the space stay away from the monotone
Upstairs, the warmth of the lighting is dialed up a notch, as well as the industrial coldness
We were told there are two floors to the boutique. Our guide described the space as "industrial", which is probably to say that it is not plushy-cozy. Designed by Paola Navone of the Milan-based Otto Studio, a regular collaborator with Christina Ong for her other COMO hotels and resorts, including the Castello del Nero in Tuscany and the COMO Metropolitan above the store, Club 21 now is a paradigm of intentionally disorganised swish. The space planning is almost bazaar-like with brands calling out from within sometimes irregular demarcations. Regular shoppers at Dover Street Market's global locations—including the one here DSMS—would be familiar with the non-linear, non-grid, nearly maze-like spatial composite. Screens, curtains and dividers—a melange of what could be found materials and objects, such as the quilting that look it was repurposed from Mylar blankets—mark off the space with no discernible alignment. In sum, the interweave of materials isn't what has not been witness elsewhere, such as the IT stores in Hong Kong.
The merchandise zoning is non-binary, since most brands stock menswear and womenswear, or unisex lines. The collections are organised by brands—some of the names lit across electronic boards. When we entered, we saw Simone Rocha on the right of the entrance, an unexpected choice and placement. As we explored, guide in tow, we saw more European brands—Ami, Amiri, (the Berlin bag brand) Innerraum, Jacquemus, Jil Sander, Marine Serre, a few that we can now recall. We did not run through the brand list, but we spotted only one Korea label, Post-Archive Faction, and only one Japanese, Human Made. Conspicuously missing are the brands associated with Club 21, such as Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe, Sacai, and Undercover. And, unsurprisingly, no Singaporean brand, not even SBTG or Youths in Balaclava. It is tempting to cast the merchandising as street-bent, but it is no doubt sifted through to appeal to increasingly super-casually-dressed customers, even those seeking leisure pursuits in Orchard Road.
Concrete floors to better underscore the design's calculated edginess
Metal-mesh frames, the obligatory touch to evoke street cred
On the floor above, the space is a tad different—warmer, but attic-like, and, similarly, not conceived for lingering. As the lift that serves both levels were still not ready for use, our good guide had to lead us up here by our first exiting the store to go to the entrance where one would have alighted if one came by car. We walked in, through the cafe by patissier Cedric Grolet, to use another elevator. The doors open right into the second floor of Club 21, now even more DSMS-like. This is more modification than revolution, but it is okay. The young shoppers that the store appears to want to attract would likely not notice the TikTok-era disarrangement, or the metal grilles used so abundantly (and the strange pillar wrappings that look like those used to line a lift to protect its walls against rough movers or deliverymen) as they make a beeline for the Jacquemus T-shirts with the crossed logo-ed ribbons, stitched to the right side of the chest.
There has not been a new Club 21 store here since 1994, when the flagship at the Four Seasons Hotel opened. Even with a better location this time, it is hard to say with certainty that the brand has pulled off a retail environment that heightens the lure of the merchandise inside. It is all attractive, but with a discernibly premeditated theatricality. The merchandise and the setting in which they are placed to entice are a synthesis of the street-inspired and the not. But the dialogue between high and low are no longer voluble, more so in the low-energy atmosphere that has been characteristic of Club 21. As this was the first day it opened, the store that CNA called "haven for fashion enthusiasts" was, as expected, slow on foot traffic. We asked our guide if it had been busy, and he said that it had mostly been visited by "VIPs, no so much the general public". We're sure, just not yet.
Photos: Chin Boh Kay
No comments:
Post a Comment