COME PLAY: From Monday, people won’t be just lining up to buy bags at Polène’s flagship at 2 Rond Point des Champs-Elysées in Paris.
The French leather goods brand has opened a 1,000-square-foot experiential space in the two-story store it has been opening in stages since last December.
Open to visitors free of charge by in-store bookings during opening hours, it occupies the lower level at the foot of the monumental wooden staircase that takes pride of place in the 4,850-square-foot unit which already connects the ground and first floor retail spaces.
First in view in the circular space is a XXL central display that evokes Polène’s ateliers in Ubrique, Spain, depicting all the steps to making a bag, from cutting the material and sewing it to a kaleidoscope of earthy-toned bobbins and a hypnotic display of resistance-testing equipment flexing small swatches of leather.
The patacabra wooden tool, which is used to set folds and seams on leather goods and is personal to each craftsperson, is also given star treatment here.
An installation featuring the Patacabra leatherworking tool.
Courtesy of Polène
Lining the walls are myriad doors. Among those left slightly ajar to tempt visitors, 35 unveil aspects of the brand’s craft-focused universe, from leatherworking techniques and the electroplating used in jewelry to a leather scent developed for the occasion and examples of its “Plèi” projects, such as leather flowers or compressed offcuts turned into bricks and furniture used in stores.
Purses are given the art treatment, with versions interpreted in wood, pebbles or even a flurry of paper flowers, created by the brand’s teams. One station offers an earpiece that broadcasts sounds captured in Polène’s Ubrique workshops.
There are also all-white models of its first retail location on Paris’ Rue de Richelieu and its flagships in Seoul, London and New York’s SoHo, which all come alive with sounds evoking each locale.
Going forward, the brand intends to have dedicated experiential spaces in its retail locations such as the new store in Hamburg, Germany, which opened on Sept. 1, and its upcoming Beijing flagship, its first physical retail point in China, slated for late November.