Student Art

Design-led furniture store Heal's has set about marking its bicentenary by stripping its windows of the usual expensive-looking (and when you reach the cash desk, expensive in reality) stock and replacing this with, err, a bunch of art students from the nearby Slade art school.

We have, of course grown used to the idea of windows with live models, plants and even temporary art installations in our shop windows. But a scheme posited upon the idea of allowing shoppers to walk into the space normally reserved for merchandise and then to commission a quick and dirty art work would seem new.

The whole shooting match is in place for just a week and if you want a woodblock print, hot off the press, then at £20, this may be the place for you. But hurry, it's already three days old, the groovy studes are looking careworn and the whole thing is due to be dismantled on Friday.

Middle American bland

In New York and somebody said to me that if you really want a snapshot of American Retail, head for the King of Prussia. This somewhat surreal instruction turns out to be nothing more than an exhortation to visit a large shopping mall near to Philadelphia. It houses more than 400 shops and its management claim it's the largest of its kind in the US (and there was I thinking it was the Mall of the Americas in Minnesota).

Anyway, it is big and it is bland. Every US retailer seems to have taken a unit here and although there were a few voids, occupancy seemed higher than in most European equivalents. That said, it has also succeeded in strippping every tenant of personality and as you walk round, you can't help wishing you were somewhere else. If this is indeed Middle America writ large, then there are vast swathes of the country that I really wouldn't care to visit. Surely there must be better than this...and it was almost empty.

By contrast, the newly-opened American Eagle flagship in Times Square, shows what good, show-stopping retail is all about. See if you can guess from the pictures, which is which...

So here are those pics from the United Nude store in Amsterdam, which turned out to be as good as the build-up that was provided. And it also happened to be busy - quite an achievement in view of the esoteric nature of the product and the highish ticket prices.

A beautiful store

His dark materials

I'll put a few pictures of a store called United Nude, in Amsterdam, up on the site later this week - when I've been there. But meantime, been corresponding with the man who designed it - Rem Koolhaus, the person who designed the Prada store in New York and numerous other high-profile spaces.

This is what he calls a "dark store" - a place where everything is left unlit, apart from the stock. Koolhaus comments: "It's just one of a number of options that you have. Another good thing about the dark-shop concept is that it has a really high impact. You enter a world. It's the same reason that cinemas are dark."

He adds: "Without answering the question of what architecture is, I would just like to say that this shop is not really even interior design. to me, it's an installation or a machine. A very efficient machine."

Should make for an interesting visit I reckon. More Thursday.

Popping over to Prada

Stand at the Place Beauvau end of the very posh Avenue Martigny in the poshest part of posh Paris and you'll be hard pushed not to catch sight of Prada's "Temporary Space." Externally, this looks like a bridge - hardly an accident as the Italian architect responsible for the design took much of his inspiration from the nearby Mirabeau Bridge, a green-painted cast iron 19th century structure.

It is certainly impressive and, unlike many luxury stores, has a very open-door policy when it comes to welcoming shoppers, irrespective of the width of their wallets.

The point about this shop however is that while many are calling it a "pop-up" (it will only be in business until the end of March), it has a feeling of permanence, both in terms of store design and the quality of the fixturing, that rather gives the lie to this.

Which calls into question the notion of what we mean by a pop-up. Is it something quick and dirty, or can a super-luxe environment also qualify? Have a look and make your own mind up and decide whether the inherent snobbery implicit in the use of the word "temporary", rather than pop-up, is merited. And if you're in Paris, go have a look. You probably won't be able to afford much, but on the other hand, it is a trompe l'oeil spectacle.

Not a Colette store

Went to Brick Lane yesterday, supposedly on the promise of a Colette pop-up shop. For those not in the loop, Colette's a fashion store in Paris famous for being famous - for some of its clothes and for a broad range of ephemera. It also has a bar that serves just mineral water - or at least it used to have.

Back in London however, arriving at the address marked out as the Colette pop-up, it turns out to be a space in the former Truman brewery which has been comandeered and turned into the "Cube Store". Step inside, and this considerable space is home to series of red geometric installations, some of which contain objects "selected" by Colette, as the blurb says. So this is it, the fashion store as curator and as adjunct to a Nissan car launch, which is what this space is really about.

It's only around until Christmas, so go visit, but don't expect a Colette pop-up store. This is a spratt to catch a mackerel, or some such.

A poor show

I like bookshops and, in general, I like pop-up shops. The logic would follow that a pop-up bookshop should be a place to cut a path towards. Was on the King's Road early this morning therefore, eager to look at the Phaidon pop-up that's just opened and will probably trade until after Christmas.

A yellow sign in the window informed passersby that there was "20% off all books". Maybe so, but aren't there offers of this kind in almost every bookshop in the land? And bearing in mind that this is a pop-up store, you might feel entitled to rather more.

But what really grated was the store itself. Everybody knows that pop-ups have a limited lifespan, but there is no excuse for adopting a lowest common denominator position. This is, quick simply, the dullest shop on the King's Road and that is saying a lot. A white box, with white fixturing. Phaidon books are pretty, but not pretty enough to offset this.

And as if this were not enough, there's a concerted PR campaign to get it written about.

Well...at least that bit's worked...