- Walls of Wax: Pop-Up Retail Shop for Michael Bastian
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The store is designed as a series of experiences that transport the customer from the meatpacking district into the strange world of Michael Bastian’s Fall collection. The design emphasizes natural materials, colors and forms throughout the scheme, allowing the materials, including their smells, tactility and sounds to create an immersive atmosphere akin to the designs of Michael Bastian.
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On your journey the first mood shift occurs upon entering the pier, a giant rough and gritty warehouse space. Your first impression of the store will be the sight and smell of a giant 20’ tall pile of hay. Seeing and walking through the pile of hay is supposed to be a playful and exciting experience, one similar to playing in a hay loft. But under this pile of hay lies something else, a creepy, waxy hidden world. Not obvious but there in front of you will be a small opening, a little tunnel in through the hay pile that gives you access to this world. The informal quality of the hay pile and its massive size will be unexpected within NY and within the pier structure.
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Entering the store, under the pile of hay is the first space called the wax room, a room coated entirely in wax. The glowing warm beeswax walls will emit sweet smells and create a soft and eerie background for a few special pieces from the collection. The wax walls move smoothly around objects and encase remnants and artifacts of the American Gothic into its scented folds, fireplaces, furniture, picture frames, hooks and lamps. Multiple layers of wax coat these familiar objects turning them into softened and smothered forms - references of their former beings - that animate the space by slightly protruding and tugging on the wax walls. Silhouettes of people changing in the dressing room and in the space beyond will be visible through the translucent walls. The space will feel both familiar and strange maybe even haunted and the detailing will create an unsettling dipped and pressurized environment.
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This space will give way to another room which is where most of Michael Bastian’s collection will be displayed. The space will be draped in a typical Michael Bastian ticking fabric providing a geometric counterpoint to the previous wax room. This is further emphasized by the furniture off of which the clothes are hung. All custom built from black painted spindles the shelving system will create ornamented skeletal forms.
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The space will be one of exploration and discovery, the interior completely obscured from the outside by a pile of hay, setting up and creating the mood for viewing the clothes of Michael Bastian.