Perpetua Mbali
Photograph: via ROARINGWILD website
Design Design Design! If there's one thing, Shanghai is infamous for its rich design culture across industries. Today we zoom into the nooks and crannies of some of our favorite creative brands, not just fashion brands but studios and interior creativity! Put your shades on cause the inspo ahead is bright!
Photograph: via ROARINGWILD website
Let’s take it back to the roaring roots of China's local street fashion brand, ROARINGWILD! This brand was welcomed with open arms by celebrity hipsters. Not surprisingly, our street-inspired fashionistas also can’t get enough of it!
ROARINGWILD recently launched its first street-facing store on Changle Lu, further reinforcing its role in ushering enlightenment to Chinese street trend culture.
This Changle Lu ROARINGWILD street-facing store is the first of its kind, crafted to resonate with the heart of its main consumers and reach more like them.
Photograph: via ROARINGWILD website
The store was designed by MHPD. Its design is functional minimalistic with the aim to honour the historical legacy embedded into No. 716 Changle Lu - a public heritage, which the brand aims to both promote and create awareness around.
Photograph: via ROARINGWILD website
The five item-layout sequence represents the brand's design language that consumers are already familiar with.
Photograph: via ROARINGWILD website
Amongst other ROARINGWILD items you can expect the standard selections including the old-fashioned structural windbreaker, their one-piece formal sleeved-jacket, the shoulder-line structural T-shirt, their pleated shirt, and the zipper-wrapped structural trousers, which are exclusively sold at the Changle Lu store.
ROARINGWILD, 716 Changle Lu.
Photograph: via FREITAG website
FREITAG is still bagging it with their line of environmentally friendly bags. This spring, FREITAG opened a new store at Julu 758, one of Shanghai’s favorite design spaces where fashion brands beautifully collide.
This is an architectural space that was built in the 1980s and used to be a textile factory. In line with the green mandate, FREITAG together with a band of architectural firms minimized carbon emissions during the renovation of the space. Even the rubble from the demolition of the ceilings and walls was collected as "Recycled Bricks”, creating a synergy and connection between what is "New" and “Old”.
Photograph: via FREITAG website
The windows have been deliberately enlarged, with large roof openings allowing for ample natural light to illuminate the ambience. The new storage racks run along the three-story free-standing wall. The "maintenance work area" on the first floor of the store clearly conveys FREITAG's core value of flowing with natural cycles.
FREITAG's "bag doctor" ensures that all their products are designed to have a longer service life.
Their folded tarpaulins seats are fixed in with industrial strips, which further highlights FREITAG's circular concept.
Photograph: via FREITAG website
The workshop space adjacent to the maintenance area provides an offline experience of F-Cut, a digital customization tool specially developed for the Shanghai store, where you can experience the design and production process of the "only one" bag more intuitively.
On the second and third floors, about 900 bags and 750 accessories of FREITAG are displayed. The store’s rooftop plants were planted in collaboration with "Urban Wilderness" and compliment the public rooftop terrace adjacent to the building.
FREITAG, 319 Jiaozhou Lu.
Photograph: via MHPD DESIGN STUDIO website
The multiple interior spaces created by MHPD Design Studio are extremely outstanding. This time, MHPD on Fahuazhen Lu designed a space that combines a coffee shop, an art bookstore and a design studio on the periphery of its own studio.
Photograph: via MHPD DESIGN STUDIO website
Café Otter’s adorably branded otter-inspired coffee shop also offers delicately crafted otter-shaped bread. They also have special decaf drinks you can try.
Photograph: via MHPD DESIGN STUDIO website
Text & Image is a small independent humanities and arts bookstore. You can expect to find a diverse range of reading materials from books to magazines and then some.
Café Otter + Text & Image, 455 Fahua Zhen Lu.
Photograph: via AESOP website
Following Aesop's opening in Xintiandi Shikumen, Aesop also opened a new store in Grand Gateway Hang Lung. Our favorite is still Aesop’s newly launched bungalow themed Shanghai Dongping Lu location.
This isn't Aesop's first architectural expression of authenticity, it's signature precedes it from
From St. Kilda in Melbourne, to Carmen Street in Antwerp, Copenhagen, Hannam-dong in Seoul, and its stores in Shanghai's Xintiandi Shikumen and now Dongping Lu. We see Aesop outlets making use of diverse architectural techniques to bring uniqueness into their spaces.
Photograph: @aesopskincare via Instagram
The interior of the red retro-brick-style-family house building on Dongping Lu is intentionally curated to make you feel right at home at Aesop. They were quite intentional about their use of handpicked relia to take you on a homey yet fittingly sensory journey.
The space inspires organic living, with Guizhou mined stones carefully carved into the geometric furniture displays, outlining the natural texture and atmosphere.
You'll also notice locally picked straw beautifully hovering above you, creating the sense of being in an inverted field.
Photograph: via AESOP website
Aesop's products and their surroundings coexist in balanced harmony where monochromatic tiled floors meet aromas of ceramic-fragrance-discs hidden in "fragrance closets".Their excellent range of skin and hair products echo whispers of pure botany as you wander through this enchanting Aesop home-away-from-home.
We can't wait to see how Aesop continues to evolve and spread its wings in Shanghai.
Aesop, 9 Dongping Lu.
Photograph: via LE MONDE de SHC!website
Yup! You're spot on! The terrace where THEE Fan Bingbing took photos wearing the stunning green dress is (drum roll please....) on the second floor of LE MONDE de SHC!
Looks like Donping is fast becoming the architectural spot to be!! Located in the white corner building at the corner of Dongping Road and Taojiang Lu, LMDS seamlessly integrates brand clothing, creative co-operation space, cafes, books and even home furnishing to name a few.
Photograph: via LE MONDE de SHC!website
The irregular POP-UP makes the street windows and in-store displays literally pop, making for the ideal lifestyle monger magnet while staying on the pulse of global trends.
Running low on outfit inspo? Fret not, LMDS brand-look-book pages have you covered!
This long skirt worn by Fan Ye hails from Belgian brand BERNADETTE, BLACKPINK. Many sought after trendsetters are following suit, let's name drop just to set the stage - Bella Hadid & Rihanna! Need we say more?! Now you can add your name to that list.
LE MONDE de SHC, 2 Dongping Lu.
