LXMT 504 | Prof. Sewell
TREND JOURNAL
Irene Lai | Winter 2022
Visual Merchandising 2022 ~ 2023
C
ONTENT
01. THE SECOND HOLIDAY SEASON IN THE PANDEMIC 02. CONSIDER COLOR-BLOCKED AESTHETICS 03. FUTURISTIC MINIMALISM 04. JOYFUL NOSTALGIA SHORT CONCLUSION 05. EXHIBIT / INSTALLATION 06. MULTI-SENSORY ORIENTED 07. PHYGITAL IN STORE 08. GALLERTY-STYLE LOOK SHORT CONCLUSION REFERENCE
01. THE SECOND HOLIDAY SEASON IN THE PANDEMIC
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From winter 2021 to the New Year 2022, the holiday season from Winter Solstice, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year and Chinese Lunar Year, the holiday collection and limited capsules are the focus of visual display in the luxury retail spaces. The popular outdoor activities in winter including skiing, high mountain climbing, and other snowing activities are the target markets in this harshly cold season. The collections feature in snow white, greyish, and earthy colorways that correspond to the trends of outdoor activities and boost the moods of shoppers in the snow world. Chinese Lunar New Year is also a big highlight for holiday collection featuring in RED which is the symbol of joy in China, and the zodiac animal of tiger.
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Dior Menswear - The skiing limited collection features the rich blue sky background and the tall snow-capped mountains standing up behind, fully displaying the warm color series clothing with a different sense of warmth and coldness at the same time.
ZEGNA
DIOR
ZEGNA's latest outdoor collection is particularly designed for mountain adventures and snow sports, with snow-covered pine trees as scene props on both sides of the giant ski helmet device to create an immersive shopping space. Besides, the color scheme is used in the iconic camel brown to create a distinctive modern style for the window display.
At the beginning of the new year in 2022, the marketing campaign of Chinese Lunar Year among luxury brands has already started. As the first shot of annual marketing, it is of great significance to the annual communication of the entire brand. VERSACE featured in three colors of black, red and white, with the traditional Chinese calligraphy on couplets and installations, to maximize the connotation of Lunar Year Festival in history.
COACH Coach's Holiday campaign is an Alpine-inspired winter wonderland where a dreamlike, fantastical woodland narrative unfolds. White carved walls and product plinths create a snowscape in the windows, designed by StudioXAG. In-store, visitors are greeted by a giant neon snowflake illuminating the space. The rear of the store emphasis is placed on a collection of branded skis, helmets and goggles. Visitors are joyfully greeted by decorative Arctic and exotic animals, including polar bears, deer, penguins and a giant giraffe.
COACH
VERSACE
02. CONSIDERED COLOR - BLOCKED AESTHETICS
Farrow & Ball x Kelly Wearstler
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In the year 2022, color is emerging a key direction for spatial design and the applications on merchandise display. Bold and refined color is the element within the store design. After all, color has a profound effect on creating moods and thus serves as a way to communicate with the viewers. Besides, this stream is used with clarity and a sense of calm, showcasing the powder-coated pastel looks.
Inspiration from Farrow & Ball x Kelly Wearstler's colour-blocked interior design. Farrow & Ball x Kelly Wearstler
Russian label Moonswoon's coral-coloured furniture and Stüssy's green cabinetry.
Stüssy
Virgil Abloh's off-white scheme in Paris store
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03. FUTURISTIC MINIMALISM Sci-fi elements of Awestruck evolving with the minimalist visuals of simplicity, is moving forward to the futuristic style. This direction provides a blank canvas, allowing the extra spaces for visitors to appreciate merchandise within a distance. Tod's Studios in Milan was designed to be a multifunctional and ever-changing space. Products are displayed on the walls like artworks, which can be moved around from theme to theme and from section to section. Besides, smooth metal is a key factor embedded in this minimalist style. Luxemporium in Changsha China has showcase a futuristic mood in which metal plays a major role, same as in the Parisian brand CELINE, which has been strongly empowered of minimal philosophy by the previous head creative director Phoebe Philo, and utilized metal for calm effects. Managing metal accents in fixtures or mannequin displays boosts the futuristic narratives through the addition of cubicles or plinths around mannequins within the spaces.
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9 EMPORIO ARMANI
LUXEMPORIUM
TOD'S
CELINE's flagship store in London is designed in the sense of French elegance by the current creative director Hedi Slimane. The elements for this physical space are marble, stone, and metal materials which are for floor, shelfs and fixtures, to create a futuristic, minimal, clean cut, and symmetrical mood in arrangements.
CELINE
04. JOYFUL NOSTALGIA In the post-pandemic era, retailers are motivated by the joyful nostalgia and use it as narratives to uplift the shoppers' moods and expect a optimistic future. The elements of decorations from modern stained glass windows to magical movie references, department stores play around to create joyful ambiance and aim to bring happiness to shoppers in the second year of COVID 19. From the store fronts, retailers extend the mood onto streets with bright colors and beaming glitters which are easily associated with hope and excitement; while blue tone lightings create an opposite calm, mysterious dream worlds. The installation and display bring people into a surreal world and blend the times from 1930s golden age in Hollywood to 1950s television and film decade. Sending joy to the public is a tactic that lifts up spirits during the passive periods and importantly, to boost the shopping foot traffic in the physical places.
LIBERTY
SELFRIDGES
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SELFRIDGES HARVEY NICHOLS
SELFRIDGES
HARVEY NICHOLS
Apart from the retail stores, brands are presenting merchandise through exhibitions and installations. The concept is to engage customers outside traditional retail spaces and enable them to explore more playful and fun during the purchase journey. This is another way for brands to increase brand awareness by creating a buzz across online and offline platforms, and is usually along with the launch of marketing campaigns.
@BULGARI milan design week 2021
@GUCCI Garden Archetypes, Florence, Italy, 2021
Bulgari inaugurated the "Metamorphosis" exhibition for the opening of Milan Design Week in September 2021. This event recounted the story of the luxury Maison by celebrating the emblem, snake, which is also a symbol of metamorphosis since 1940s. Showcasing the evolution of the brand's growing path, the customers could immerse themselves between the installations and appreciate the art pieces in the garden of the Bvlgari Hotel in Milan. GUCCI created a physical and a virtual exhibition called GUCCI Garden to celebrate its 100th anniversary incorporating gaming, the popular activation between generation z into the space. The physical event was hold in Florence, Italy, and the digital exhibition was performing through avatar techniques to create unique experience for each visit that drag customers into the Roblox universe.
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Louis Vuitton exhibition "SEE LV" in Hangzhou is another highlight for visual merchandising. By five sectors showcasing the collections from previous designers to the current, Louis Vuitton created an immersive space intertwining with interactive devices and dynamic lighting. MACY's installed giant chandeliers on the ceilings of the hallways for the pleasant atmosphere in Christmas 2021. The effect exudes the magnificence and strengthen the visual impacts for the first eye.
@Louis Vuitton "SEE LV" exhibition, Hangzhou, China, 2021
@MACY'S Christmas holiday, NEW YORK, USA, 2021
05. EXHIBIT / INSTALLATION
06. MULTI-SENSORY ORIENTED
@CHANEL perfume exhibition, Shanghai, China, 2021
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Customers nowadays are pursuing the experimental shopping experience in store. They are not satisfied with the product outlook, instead, they want to experience the items showcased in front of them. The power of Visual merchandising is augmenting the ambience in spaces, through the five senses of sight, sound, smell, touch, and feel that have embedded in human nature.
13 Brands are creating the atmosphere for the customers by multi-sensory approaches and insights of product information to engage visitors and evolve the emotions to trigger their purchase intention. Besides, utilizing dynamic displays such as videos shown on big screens can optimize the visual impacts from simply static showcasing. Gentle Monster had launched a limited time of pop-up space in Beijing, China in September 2021. The space showcased a giant facial robot installation with a big screen playing the video work "Truth or dare" by artist Jonas Linndstroem in the background. The impact from both static and dynamic visuals capture each customer's attention to step into GM's world. Chanel perfume exhibition in Shanghai was opened in September 2021 too. The place was intentionally designed as a multi-sensory spaces combining visuals, music, touch and smell. Each window showcased a video for a perfume which can be tried on on the spot while visitors walking through. Selfridges, the department store in London, the UK, has launched a well-being project named Superself in keeping with its 2022 creative theme of superfutures. Superself offers both online and offline shoppers with self-discovery opportunities by trying products from different categories including lifestyle and beauty to optimize people's mental well-beings.
@SELFRIDGES, well-being therapy project-Superself, London, the UK, 2022
@Gentle Monster limited pop-up "True or Dare", Beijing, China, 2021
PHYSICAL + DIGITAL = PHYGITAL
14 @Louis Vuitton, future bags collection, Shanghai, China, 2021
PRODUCT DESIGN
@BURBERRY
VIRTUAL REALITY
@BURBERRY AR Technologies in store, 2020-now
AUGMENTED REALITY: VIRTUAL TRY-ON
@Farfetch HOLOGRAM
07. PHYGITAL IN STORE Due to the rapidly ever-changing consumer behavior under the impact of COVID 19, luxury brands are driven toward digitalization to increase the sales volume and attract customers in a new way. Customers are not only satisfying with the gorgeous outlooks of merchandise but also want to participate in the brands. Thus, several luxury brands have incorporated some digital components into VM such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Hologram, Digital railing, Connected mirror, etc. Besides, product design that incorporate technologies is also a highlight in this trend. The iconic example is Louis Vuitton "Canvas of the future" collection. The prototype equipped with two fully functional LED screens displayed through two cut out sections of the brands most iconic bag with AMOLED 1,920 x 1,440 resolution, is located at the focal point in-store in Shanghai, China in 2021, creating a WOW moment for customers. Burberry has executed AR and VR for years, and introduced its app with Google search for customers. The virtual try-on is available in-store and the techniques are incorporated into the retail spaces. Hologram is another emerging technology that brands will apply on window displays by virtual 3D image formed by the light beams from a laser and other lighting sources, giving viewers a virtual vision of an object or a figure. The cost of hologram is less than VR and usually brands cooperate with external professional team to develop it. Farfetch has creates the prototype for hologram, aiming to give customers opportunities to create customized products on their preferences across sizes, colors, and shapes within options.
08. GALLERY-STYLE LOOK @CELINE new perfume store, Paris, France, 2021.
Making the retail spaces into gallery-style places is a trends in VM too. Luxury Maisons DIOR and CELINE are expanding the interior spaces and segregate the space into different sectors by art installations and home furniture, rest and tea areas, and designating the spaces into a museum look. The aim is to offer the shopping experience with fully 360° degree, and elevate products up to the level of art pieces. While shopping in store, customers are shopping as they are appreciating precious pieces inside an art gallery or a museum. Walking through the glass display cases, home decoration and furniture made from metal, marble and oak, customers could feel at home and that is what new CELINE wants to convey to a wider customers with more collections in store.
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Dior adopted this approaches in the retail stores as well as pop-up stores. The aim is to engage the customers with complete experience and immersing them through the transmit of its message, values, identity not only in exhibitions but retail spaces. The store in Shanghai presented its menswear collection in the gallery-like display retail presence, exuding both elegance and vacation moods at the same time, which impresses shoppers' images of brand from exhibitions to the physical stores.
@CELINE flagship, Paris, France, 2021.
@DIOR SS HOMME, Shanghai, 2021.
16 CONCLUSION Nowadays retailers play around the themes of visual merchandising with diverse ideas in order to engage changeable consumer behaviors. In the current and nearly coming era, consumers are more informative and well-educated with brands, products, and services in the retail sector, so the demands for shopping/consumer experiences thrive and grow rapidly. COLOR is always the main element in visual display. It creates the impact on visualization on the first eye, so it is not abandoned through times. The holiday season and joyful nostalgia are two streams work well together, since consumers desire for not only product itself, but the STORYTELLING of the brand as well as the emotions. The happy visual is the first impression to catch people's eye, however, to engage consumers successfully is to evoke the moods and imagination through storytelling. In the ordinary life, especially during the pandemic, bright and bold color represent happiness, creativity and youth. Lastly, FUTURISM is always a popular theme among current and future consumers along the thriving of digitalization and technology. Sci-fi materials penetrating into human's life through movies and videos is a fact. This phenomenon is applied on the catwalk and store design too. Creating a futuristic space in minimal style exudes a clean cut ambiance and clear messages for the audience.
Basically, the ongoing and emerging trends in visual merchandising are related to immersive shopping experience. To save the physical retail spaces, visual merchandising serves as the important role to help marketing promotions in-store by incorporating digital technologies in this digital world, especially the retail industries are going OMO (Online merges offline) model that offers more seamless experience than omnichannel does. Future customers including generation Z are growing up with digital devices desire for interactive experience in-store and the real touch originated from human nature. Visual merchandisers captured these needs and come up with catchy approaches such as creating five senses atmosphere, resonating the target consumers with emotions to the brand value. The goal is to impress customers to go back in the physical stores and enjoy their "PHYGITAL moment" through dynamic displays, digital components, and innovative product design. Collaboration between fashion and art has prevailed over time but still in trends. The new retail strategy of CELINE under the helm of the creative director Hedi Slimane is well-presented the avant-garde spirit with art installations of paintings, bookshelves, furniture and arty spaces for visitors to savor the tranquil beauty. These trends are related to class LXMT504 in terms of the window displays and in-store displays because they showcased the nature of visual merchandising area that are evolved with time and society. In the digital era, customers’ preference are a critical factor that brands need to keep abreast of. When brands are transforming, marketing are going digital, so as visual merchandising. I also found it is useful to learn the trends when crafting the final project because there are not only the rules of VM taking part in, but also the brand messages that should be incorporated into the spaces.
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Irene Lai | Winter 2022
THANK YOU.