Alquema

Sydney, Australia

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Alquema

Sydney, Australia

Firm

loopcreative

Type

Commercial › Retail

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2016

SIZE

0 sqft - 1000 sqft

BUDGET

$100K - 500K

Australian fashion brand, Alquema, has launched its flagship store in Sydney’s iconic Queen Victoria Building with the help of Sydney based design studio, loopcreative.

The first city centre store for the brand launched this week, nestled amongst a range of high-end fashion and luxury brands within the heritage listed site.

The 75sqm space draws inspiration from owner Virginia Rouse’s love of simple, elegant, gallery-style spaces and the minimalism of Japanese design, which is perfectly reflected in the brand’s focus on the refinement of form, texture, composition and colour.

The store’s main design feature is a custom made sculptural radial steel clothing rack modeled from the ‘golden ratio’ that sits in the middle of the store, gently guiding the customer’s journey and exhibiting the latest clothing collections.

Rod Faucheux, director of loopcreative, explains: “We had no fewer than five builders tell us that what we had designed could not be built, which only encouraged us to push forward and find someone that could help us realise our unusual new design. Using a 3D printer we were able to create a nylon scale model of the piece to give the builders a greater sense of what we were trying to achieve, and the end result is exactly how we had envisioned it in those early design stages.”

Other design elements within the store include a series of variable height jewellery display boxes, rolling mirrors and custom designed mannequin light frames to create a unique point of difference. The focus on elegance and design continues right through to the mannequins with custom chrome-dipped torsos sourced from the Netherlands.

loopcreative is a Sydney based design studio with a passion for hospitality, retail and installation projects, creating vivid consumer experiences that enhance people’s lives at multiple points of interaction through interiors, graphics and 3D visualisation. Recent projects have included aMBUSH Gallery at Central Park; Chur Burger at Sydney Airport; KOI Dessert Bar for former MasterChef contestant Reynold Poernomo in Chippendale; Riva Reno Gelato at Barangaroo; and SAL Deli at the newly opened Chifley Plaza.