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Harvey Nichols, Birmingham

If you are lucky enough to visit the Mailbox, Birmingham you must tour its extravagant anchor store. It’s a glamorous, gleaming shopping emporium that is very different from its London parent. Synonymous with quality, contemporary styling and quirkiness with a reputation for excellence in everything from its product to visual merchandising, Harvey Nichols excels where others fail. The London store, built in 1889, has been the home of this iconic brand. So it is surprising and at the same time fitting to find this leading contemporary retailer within this purpose built, cutting edge mall.


Whilst the original facade of the Royal Mail building still remains, walk through its doors and the interior has been completely gutted and redeveloped beyond recognition. At the far end of the mall Harvey Nichols’ newly renovated store is double its original size and is a reflective and truly space age experience. So very different from Knightsbridge, yet completely at home!


Flamboyant in nature and in spirit, this store astounds you everywhere you look. The concept is a collection of luxurious finishes that range in form from: shiny copper to sleek steel, gilt to chrome, marble to honed wood. Even the ceiling is covered in a variety of reflective surfaces. Such a selection of materials really shouldn’t work, but here at this premium shopping emporium they just do. They come together and assault your senses. It is retail theatre at its very best: from dark to light, spotlights to neon, pendant to diffused, the lighting takes you on a journey to inspire and enlighten. The flooring is equally diverse from glitzy marble to dull concrete and plush carpet to stripped wood, each surface treatment denotes a new and exciting area. Nothing is left unfinished, everything is considered in this stimulating and eclectic environment.


The shopfittings, fixtures, garment rails, shelving, props and accessories are all amazing, what more can I say and what else would you expect? As with the flooring, lighting and finishes, each style of shop fixture tells a new story, a different brand within the ultimate department store. Low level display plinths constructed from marble and wood, coupled with featureless mannequins, are used to display accessories and lead your eye into and around the store. Some large cage-like structures, crafted from flat, angular metal, reach high up into the double height ceiling within footwear. Other areas use eye level display tables covered in sheet steel with shiny copper bottoms, or wood based with flat sheet steel tops to counterbalance the extreme heights and to tell different brand stories. My favourite has to be the highly polished copper department in menswear: tubular uprights support large, shallow, equally shiny copper trays and display folded merchandise. Whilst in women’s wear, thick, tubular brass garment rails appear to be tied in position with unlimited copper wire. A very crude construction similar to that used by the Scouts, is thoroughly ‘glammed up’ here with polished brass uprights topped with wood, together with seriously shiny copper wire. This store knows no bounds.


By far the greatest sensation in this fashion emporium is the visual merchandising. Having walked through a tunnel lit with a zillion tiny LEDS your vision is drawn to a fabulous display of mannequins. The curtain unfolds, the stage is lit and the scene is set – it’s truly awesome. Rugs and chairs are positioned amongst the various areas and feature further VM delights.

This newly launched store designed by Virgile and Partners is utter perfection. It is definitely worth taking a special shopping trip to Birmingham. I thoroughly recommend it.

 
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