Creating a Cultural Point of View: Design for International Brand Translation

Design Management Institute

By Paula Stafford

Global brands and instantaneous access to lifestyle trends have in many cases turned retail into a ubiquitous commodity and made retail design more challenging than ever before. While most retailers are facing unprecedented turbulent times, the modern consumer is increasingly sophisticated—global, cosmopolitan, empowered. Shoppers are more savvy; clients’ needs are more complex. Space, time, and resources are limited. For the retail designer, this presents a particular set of challenges as increased exposure calls for continuous innovation of the brand to attract an increasingly discerning customer.

To thrive in this kind of market, retailers must engage customers by offering more than just a place to shop, but also a destination driven by inspiration, storytelling, and meaningful connections. The brands with the equity to scale globally have moved well beyond distribution into the world of retail strategically blended with hospitality, societal, and entertainment offerings.

As a result, the department store has evolved. In the past, department stores were primarily local institutions serving a specific customer base—with brands like Harrod’s, synonymous with London, and Saks with New York. But in today’s world of endless choices of specialty stores, and big box stores offering a plethora of everyday goods, the opportunity for department stores to once again become the authority of fashion and a lens to the world is ripe.

With this opportunity comes the challenge of establishing and maintaining a strong house brand alongside the showcased designer labels. The result is the rise of the branded flagship—a department store with a personality, which serves not only as a mercantile channel but also as a purveyor of international culture and style.

The flagship as a branded destination often serves as the entry into new markets and as a venue in which retailers can distinguish their brand and create a unique cultural point of view. As a result, they need to be adept at maintaining brand clarity while leveraging the distinct style and preferences of the local culture to create a distinctly tailored experience and merchandise offering.

To make this translation a reality, the process for international retail design requires the ability to maintain the strength, integrity, and core traits of the brand above all else. The brand needs to remain as strong as its local context but translate distinctly into the new environment.

The Harvey Nichols brand

UK-based Harvey Nichols is one of Callison’s clients, and a prime example of a retailer that has been a forerunner in the integration of visual design, marketing, and merchandising to create authentic, original experiences. With often-theatrical visual merchandising, an exclusive offering of cutting-edge international labels, VIP fashion events, and an in-house food and beverage service, Harvey Nichols is recognized for an atmosphere that evokes playful sophistication and edgy merchandising.

What differentiates Harvey Nichols across the world is its sophisticated use of visual programming and distinct design to engage and entertain the customer. Companies like Harvey Nichols are experts at using design to engage their customers through the use of conceptual merchandising, personalities, art installations, and fashion shows to transform the brand of the store into an experience. The result is stores that are not just places to shop but actual destinations, driven by imagination, connections and storytelling.

Callison designed Harvey Nichols’s first international department store in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, and we most recently designed their Jakarta, Indonesia, store, which opened last fall. Each destination features a distinct environment, but each shares the DNA of a common brand.

The Harvey Nichols brand is heavily rooted in a British heritage, and the design for both new locations needed to respect the brand’s roots. However, it was equally important that the brand distinctly respond to the environment and cultural influences in both Dubai and Indonesia. For example, the Dubai store is stark, sparse and heavily dosed with white in response to the cool, desert environment. In contrast, the Indonesia store is vibrant, rich, and bright—full of traditional Indonesian patterns and colors.

But both remain embedded in their roots. The common elements throughout both the stores evoke the sense of humor and whimsy the brand is known for.

Harvey Nichols Dubai

Harvey Nichols in Dubai is an elegant integration of retail function and sophisticated style that takes advantage of carefully designed ceilings, planned sightlines and large-scale architectural features. For example, a grand, three-level escalator, dramatically lit by an array of overhead circular LED fixtures that shifts colors continuously, stands as the heart of the store, and as a way to give customers traveling up and down enticing glimpses onto each level.

The result is the most modern, edgy and fashion-focused store of its scale in Dubai. Taking cues from the desert climate, the Harvey Nichols store is a striking shopping environment defined by strong structural elements, minimalist detailing, modern finishes and exceptional lighting. Its mall-side façade, repeated on each of the store’s three levels, presents a highly articulated geometric design that boldly reinforces its position as the luxury anchor store surrounded by luxury brands, while large show windows highlight inventive and engaging displays.

For this store, Callison created rooms or halls that group similar merchandise delineated with unique architecture and finishes, including ceiling treatments and flooring patterns. Casework finished with deep textural woods is used extensively in the ladies’ designer area, providing a rich contrast to the white, glossy, large-scale floor tiles.

The flooring throughout the store is nearly all hard-surface; carpet is specified in only a few areas, such as the ladies’ shoe salon and the intimate apparel department, which also includes frosted-glass privacy screening in deference to the Middle Eastern shopper's emphasis on modesty. Otherwise, highly polished wood, stone, and other hard surfaces reinforce the sparkling, edgy atmosphere.

The lighting is bright compared to European standards. We used a variety of lighting types to reinforce the differentiation of zones within the store. A backlit stretch matrix ceiling system on the first floor allows for glowing, colored light to wash the space, adding visual interest and energy to the space. Together with custom fixtures, display pieces, and fittings, the effect is a seamless atmosphere of edgy luxury.

Because the Harvey Nichols customer is a connoisseur of global fashion and design trends, we sought to incorporate changeability into the store design. Sensory affects like color-shifting lighting and flat-screen animation, as well as the open floor plan and adaptable platforms, make updating presentations to the newest designers and trends more efficient and effective.

Tying it all together is an impressive window display designed to celebrate and showcase this visual merchandising to the outside world.

Harvey Nichols Jakarta

For its part, the Jakarta flagship store draws inspiration from the rich artisanship of Indonesia. Bold, striking architectural elements and refined interiors characterize the four-level, 96,840-square-foot department store, which features exclusive, international luxury brands in an environment distinctly tailored to the time-honored traditions and cosmopolitan flair of Jakarta. To begin with, we referenced a batik pattern known as parang and extended it throughout the store using the craftsmanship of local artisans for hand-cut tiles, handcrafted furnishings, fabrics, metal and woodworks. At times, the parang pattern was fused with British op art, as well as with the Harvey Nichols logo; it is also showcased on Harvey Nichols’s exterior front façade, which towers eight stories over Grand Indonesia, Jakarta’s lively commercial center. From a classic Indonesian three-wheeled rickshaw taxi covered in British buttons to parang-inspired hand-woven metal screens and mannequin birdcage installations in the main atrium, the traditional artisan culture of Indonesia has been tastefully applied to modern design concepts.

Again featuring custom craftsmanship and materials for public art displays, each floor is designed as a presentation of art. As such, each floor is designed with a distinct character based on the energy of artistic environments, tied together through bold, playful architecture. An open, meandering layout; annular, curving walls; layered glass; and dramatic lighting creates a sense of theatrical movement through the space.

Shoppers entering the Jarkarta store move through a dynamic gallery space where accessories and shoes are elegantly displayed across a white landscape accented by polished silver, mirrored surfaces and curved glass walls. Adjacent to the artist gallery (so called because of its artsy yet casual feel) is the cosmetics area, distinguished by a bold and rich palette of deep chocolate hues, bright white glass and faceted reflective display elements.

A dramatic sculptural curved staircase links this level with the men’s and women’s designer shops and a private elevator takes customers directly to the Harvey Nichols Social House restaurant on the top floor.

The men’s designer shop, which stands on the lower ground level, is characterized by an industrial aesthetic and a dramatic palette of deep tones and layered surfaces. Modern, backlit metal screens—hand-cut, layered, and patterned) create an artful atmosphere contrasted with boldly sculpted spaces, concrete floor tiles and polished metalwork. A dramatically styled men’s personal shopping lounge reinforces the distinct feel of a social club.

The upper ground level houses the womenswear collection. The space is fluid in form and treated with playful and sophisticated details. A warm white metal curtain subtly filters light onto the hand-carved limestone flooring and blush-toned finishes, creating a soft, luxurious setting. Curved screening elements create intimate salons within this open, light-filled space and encourage exploration of the fashion collections.

A global future, locally

Design for each of these projects required the ability to draw from a myriad of cultures and a dexterous approach to design. As evidenced from locations as diverse as Dubai and Jakarta, this is an exciting time for designers as we rise to the challenge of creating fresh, innovative environments across the globe.

With tight deadlines and limited resources, creative professionals will continue to be challenged to innovate through learned skills, natural talents and a passion to communicate strategically through design. Fortunately, as innovation and design continue to evolve as a key driver to growth and differentiation, the role of design to add value remains relevant. There has never been a better time in the world for creative and design services to lead the way in defining leading brands and the consumer experience.