office had a chance to hear from Rebekka Bay, Creative Director of Marimekko, who is taking the brand into the future with changes that both respect and evolve the house heritage.
This store was announced with the closing of the flagship in the Flatiron District last year. How does this new location in Soho speak to the essence of the new space?
This new store concept in Soho is designed to embody Marimekko’s optimistic and creative lifestyle philosophy. For those unfamiliar with Marimekko, it is a brand that is quite hard to pin down in one category – we have always walked our own path in the boundaries between fashion, design, art, and architecture. Back in the 1970s, our founder used to say that Marimekko could have equally taken any other form than the art of printmaking: It could have been a flower shop, architecture, or even modern jazz. Whatever we did needed to bring joy and empowerment to people. Now, in New York, we are building on that foundation with a new store designed to host inspiring visual activations and regular, even surprising events together with local creatives. We want to bring the Marimekko experience to life in a hyper-local context, and Soho felt like a natural choice as it feels like a very local neighborhood. It is full of buzz but is still walkable. It feels both familiar and very New York.
Are there any themes that grounded the approach to designing this new store?
Our theme for the store concept is “work-in-progress". The space is an ever-evolving concept and experience, which is most visible in the wooden grid that surrounds the interior of the store, much like the foundation of a building. The grid allows us to move things around easily, to test and evolve the space over time. The space also takes inspiration from the Shaker movement. In essence, we wanted to create a space that is inviting and easy to approach, reflecting our values of embracing authenticity, inclusivity, and equality.
What was the most memorable part of the design process?
For the space, we collected lesser-known Finnish vintage furniture pieces that are both pragmatic and sculptural – the beginning of an ever-expanding collection. In addition to that, we have brought in industrial trolleys from our Helsinki textile printing factory, which is at the heart of the brand in many ways.
How does this store fit into the Marimekko design philosophy?
Marimekko has never been about trends, but rather about relevancy in time through creative dialogue, both on and off product-level. In addition to allowing the space to be easily transformed, the idea of a modular store also reflects the way we build our collections. Our goal is to create designs that help our customers build a capsule wardrobe consisting of timeless pieces they do not want to throw away, but rather that that they can mix and match over the years.