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Harvey Nichols, Birmingham If you are lucky enough to visit the Mailbox, Birmingham you must tour its extravagant anchor store. It’s a glamorous, gleaming shopping emporium that is very different from its London parent. Synonymous with quality, contemporary styling and quirkiness with a reputation for excellence in everything from its product to visual merchandising, Harvey Nichols excels where others fail. The London store, built in 1889, has been the home of this iconic brand. So it is surprising and at the same time fitting to find this leading contemporary retailer within this purpose built, cutting edge mall.
The shopfittings, fixtures, garment rails, shelving, props and accessories are all amazing, what more can I say and what else would you expect? As with the flooring, lighting and finishes, each style of shop fixture tells a new story, a different brand within the ultimate department store. Low level display plinths constructed from marble and wood, coupled with featureless mannequins, are used to display accessories and lead your eye into and around the store. Some large cage-like structures, crafted from flat, angular metal, reach high up into the double height ceiling within footwear. Other areas use eye level display tables covered in sheet steel with shiny copper bottoms, or wood based with flat sheet steel tops to counterbalance the extreme heights and to tell different brand stories. My favourite has to be the highly polished copper department in menswear: tubular uprights support large, shallow, equally shiny copper trays and display folded merchandise. Whilst in women’s wear, thick, tubular brass garment rails appear to be tied in position with unlimited copper wire. A very crude construction similar to that used by the Scouts, is thoroughly ‘glammed up’ here with polished brass uprights topped with wood, together with seriously shiny copper wire. This store knows no bounds.
This newly launched store designed by Virgile and Partners is utter perfection. It is definitely worth taking a special shopping trip to Birmingham. I thoroughly recommend it. |
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Shop and Display Equipment Association
24 Croydon Road, Caterham, Surrey CR3 6YR Tel: 01883 348911 Fax: 01883 343435 email:enquiries@sdea.co.uk
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