Officially opened on Wednesday 22nd October with a cocktail party hosted by Bally chief executive Frederic de Narp together with Lupita Nyong’o and Luke Evans, this store designed by David Chipperfield, is the brand’s first new flagship in over 20 years.
For the design of its relocated New Bond Street store, Bally’s opened up its archive of store designs for inspiration, and one of these store designs immediately caught the David Chipperfield’s eye. Opened in Spiez, Switzerland, it was the work of a young Marcel Breuer, on his way to becoming one of the master modernists.
“It’s a brand that has incredible heritage and it’s one of the oldest companies to be in continuous trading as well,” Chipperfield told Dezeen in his most recent interview. “It was interesting to try and understand what the heritage of Bally was and how that could be included going forward.”
Spanning three floors of retail space, the store’s basement houses the brand’s menswear collection while the ground floor is devoted to womenswear. The first floor area is home to the retailer’s Made to Order, Made to Colour and Shoe Caring services.
On all levels, burgundy-colored boxes are stacked in columns across sections of the walls. This allows customers to pick out the shoes themselves rather than waiting for a shop assistant to disappear into the bowels of the building and fetch the right pair.
To prominently display the shoes out of their boxes, Chipperfield designed shelves made from bent sections of aluminium, which hook into the slots in the walls with wooden brackets.
“This was a project of designing a shelf because without the shelf, the shoe shop can’t work,” said Chipperfield Dezeen.
The shop is now open for trading and Chipperfield’s Milan office will continue to work with the brand on subsequent store designs, the next of which is due to open on Los Angeles’ Rodeo Drive next year.