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by ArabianBusiness.com staff writer on Thursday, 09 October 2008
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A S*ucy revamp by Eiko Fajita-Summers shows how fashion and interiors go hand-in-hand.
S*uce, a ‘trend boutique' located at the Village Mall on Jumeirah Beach Road, first opened its doors in Febuary 2004. Following its success as a woman's fashion haven, the store underwent a major expansion and re-fit last year, in a designer collaboration between Zayan Ghandour - co-founder, buyer and creative director of S*uce, and Eiko Fujita-Summers, a senior designer at Above Consultancy design firm.
Having already established a strong style concept of its own - the store needed a re-vamp to go hand-in-hand with its extension. Ghandour wanted to keep the theme, of the boutique, ‘as if walking into your best-friends wardrobe' - the brand's well-established trademark, elaborating on this idea, the pair joined forces.
"The design brief was very unconventional," said Ghandour. "It emerged through the collection of a lot of ideas all mixed together from Eiko's travels, books and magazines along with mine. Most of the time, collectively, we have so many ideas and we just don't have enough space for all of them."
"That's right. Normally, briefing for us is collecting tons of gorgeous pictures and brainstorming from there, the strangest thing is sometimes we come up with the same image," said Fujita-Summers.
The new extension features some of S*uce's trademark interior design elements such as designer chandeliers, white concrete flooring, and gold-finished fixtures such as hanging rails, and cabinet detailing. However, there are many new and unique design elements including photo-wall-frames used to display accessories, kitschy neon signs and Tromp L'Oeil furniture (specialists in painted artwork on furniture).
Despite having introduced new and improved design elements to the space, Eiko worked hard not to completely wipe-out the ‘old' look of the store - weaving the old with the new.
"With a refit, for me there always has to be some kind of transition. By that I mean I don't like faking what's already there, so why not have it as part of the design? The change had to be present, showing that everything has to get better. It's all about constant change - it's a fashion store at the end of the day, nothing in the fashion industry ever stays the same, so I wanted the interior to portray that," said Fujita-Summers.
The design of S*uce is essentially a theme that's growing and developing. The original S*uce according to Eiko "had a very strong style, but it didn't have a catching point or much focus...but it was really easy for me to look and expand on the existing idea itself."
The trendy outlet had white-painted wooden floors, and the walls were painted a different colour every six-months to give the place a ‘new' look every so often. Eiko kept the original materials used and added her own unique twist to them.
"There was a lot of material that we had to keep because of the nature of the store. However, there is a section where the old store obviously develops into the new - we wanted it to be a very natural change, connected with the extension, but still with a distinct difference," said Eiko.
"We used the same wooden flooring - white concrete and wood, and we added a gold extension just to separate the old from the new," she added.
Walking into the store, the difference between the ‘white-side' (old), and ‘gold-side' (new) is immediately noticeable. Using a strong palette of gold, pink and white - the store's main identity colours, the interiors seem to flow into each other in a seamless design.
The floor half painted white and the other, gold, is evidence of this, as is the seating stool laid up against the wall. In addition, half of the wall is painted-white, while the other is covered in pretty bird-detailed wallpaper - allowing the transition to be subtle, yet highly clear.
"At first we used to change the colours of the walls every six months then, we ran out of colours I guess....and opted for wallpaper," said Ghandour. "We fell in love with it instantly at a trade show in London - it wasn't actually sold in stores until after we bought it. Only a little of the paper was used at the beginning, just a door and two walls, but we expanded its use, and blinged it with Swarovski Crystals - now it's all part of the Sauce identity."
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