David Thulstrup has designed the flagship boutique for Mark Kenly Domino Tan, the first retail store for the talented Danish fashion designer who has won acclaim for his namesake label.
“As it’s Mark’s first store I wanted to create the perfect framework to highlight the minimalist, classic and feminine silhouettes he is renowned for,” says David Thulstrup, principal of the Copenhagen-based studio. He kept the space neutral with a couple of strong architectural expressions that play to Tan’s structured tailoring.
“It’s a beautiful early 20th century store with walls that aren’t straight and beaten up wooden floors which I retained and then I added these architectural interventions that become a modern focal point,” says Thulstrup. The first is a series of rectangular panels with granular surfaces in a parchment colour that are visibly detached from the soft grey painted walls. They frame the clothing racks so that the space itself recedes into the background. In the rear, a wall of 100 large square glass bricks with a ripple effect allows in natural light as well as making a monolithic statement.
“Mark places strong emphasis on materials, often using the fabric as a foundation of a collection, so we want to reflect that in our material choices,” says Thulstrup.
He designed freestanding metal clothes racks with a minimalist profile that best present Tan’s ready-to-wear collection. In the centre of the space is a large display table made of birds-eye birch veneer for accessories and the books and objects Tan stocks to complement his clothing. For the back of the store Thulstrup designed a daybed covered in a soft white boucle fabric, inviting customers to make themselves comfortable.
“As well as ready-to-wear Mark has an atelier service making exquisite custom clothing but he wants the overall experience of the store to be welcoming and unpretentious and that’s where the colour palette and the daybed comes in.”
For Mark Tan working with David Thulstrup was a perfect partnership: “I admire David’s aesthetic, his tactile approach to materials and the way he thinks about textures and surfaces in a space. His project was so coherent with what I imagined for my new shop that the choice has been fast and obvious, it was a dream coming true!”
Location Store Strandstræde 9, Copenhagen
Architect David Thulstrup
Photos courtesy Irina Boersma
