Show room

Celine’s new London flagship offers an odyssey of ornamental riches

- DAL CHODHA

Approach the baroque-style façade of Celine’s new London flagship and you will be greeted not by handbags, shoes and clothes, but by a statement of material integrity and modernist rigour: taking pride of place in the window is a sculpture by the Danish artist Marie Lund featuring a copper wing set against blocks of clay. Perfectly disarming and seductive, this is a portal into an arena of exacting opulence as envisioned by the brand’s artistic director Hedi Slimane.

With its veiny marble floors, folding mirrors and glowing shelves, the store – located at 40 New Bond Street – channels a brutalist neoclassical ambience somewhere between a 15th-century Dutch still life and the luminous hotel suite in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is a sculptural space, flooded with stone, granite, marble, reclaimed oak, concrete, polished stainless steel and brass. A carnival of materials, furniture and artworks that is elemental and awesome.

Slimane’s intention was to interact with the Grade II-listed Edwardian building in two unique ways. The 345 sq m ground floor is devoted to women, formulated around the aura of French elegance and classical luxury. An octagonal room – originally designed in the manner of an Italian grotto with panels of fine shell work – is now dedicated to the Celine Haute Parfumerie collection. Long shelves and racks float in space. Two wooden handrail sculptures, by London-based Russian artist Nika Neelova, are suspended from the ceiling. ‘This commission was an interesting way of letting go of something and allowing it to acquire its own life and place in the world. One that is outside of institutions and galleries,’ she says.