This week’s design news: Apple’s new Vancouver hub, Window procuring, and luxurious skin treatment goes petite

Retail

Tech hub

Apple lately opened the doorways to its new Vancouver store, a two-storey site that doubles the company’s footprint in the downtown space. Sitting down at an angle to the intersection of West Georgia and Howe Streets, the store’s ground-to-ceiling home windows face the Vancouver Artwork Gallery, a nod to the function that Apple’s tech instruments perform in innovative industries. On the store’s ground amount, products together with the range of Apple watches and their assorted straps can be explored with the assistance of Apple group members who, blended, discuss some 36 languages. A skylit staircase qualified prospects to the store’s 2nd flooring in which consumers can get aspect in totally free Today at Apple sessions or convene on stadium-model seating.

Apple Pacific Centre, 701 W. Ga St., Vancouver, 778-373-1800, apple.com.

Trending

Hip to be square

Whether it’s the continuing affect of Y2K nostalgia or the rising balletcore aesthetic favoured by designers like New York’s Sandy Liang, sq.-toed footwear are formally again. Montreal-centered footwear brand Maguire (maguireshoes.com), which gained the rising talent award for components at the Canadian Arts & Trend Awards in Oct, launched the sq.-toed Palma ankle boot seen below back in 2020. At the time, founder and designer Myriam Belzile-Maguire states the style “was deemed a pretty edgy, fringe boot due to the fact of the square toe.” But with its relaxed memory foam insole, the type has considering the fact that come to be a bestseller.

Enterprise

Window watch

In the age of experiential retail, getaway window displays still present a really obvious option for stores to go all out. “Now a lot more than at any time, merchants want to present activities that make the customer sense a little something and, of course, just take gain of the opportunity of being showcased in social media platforms and ‘go viral,’” suggests Raul Tovar, co-founder and resourceful director of WindowsWear. The advertising and marketing tactic has arrive a extended way from vignettes of Santas and candy canes, with shops using superior-tech enhancements these types of as augmented actuality and gamification to woo passersby. Get The Bay, which released a digital resource that transports Canadians into the windows of its downtown Toronto shop from anyplace across the region as a result of a QR code. Other shops are partnering with visible artists to develop memorable, one particular-of-a-sort displays. Hermès tapped Montreal artist Jannick Deslauriers to interpret its 2022 topic “Lighthearted!” as a artistic display screen at the Toronto flagship. In a playful move, Louis Vuitton partnered with master Lego builders on a collection of window and store shows anchored by preparations of bricks in the brand’s signature Damier pattern. As WindowsWear’s Tovar details out, these elaborate principles endure in a electronic world mainly because window procuring will work. “Products shown in retailer windows and pop ups are likely to promote out,” he states.

Obsession

Eye spy

Toronto-primarily based Nlaka’pamux designer Warren Steven Scott has expanded his artistic output to eyewear through a collaboration with Canadian retailer New Glance (newlook.ca). The Avenue x Warren Steven Scott assortment faucets into the designer’s type signatures, together with the use of acrylic and a lively color palette. It also honours his neighborhood, with every single of the 21 types staying named for close friends, family members, purchasers or mentors.

Financial investment acquire

Smaller ponder

Elegance brand names have a tendency to mark the vacation season with elaborate sets that compile bestsellers and new releases into collections of sampler-sized merchandise. For skincare buffs, it does not get a lot more luxe than a petit cadeau from Clé de Peau, the groundbreaking luxurious skincare and cosmetics model owned by Japan’s Shiseido. This possibility contains an 8-piece introduction to Clé de Peau’s comprehensive skincare selection, with miniatures that cleanse, hydrate and take care of skin to expose its radiance, like its signature the Cream.

Clé de Peau Beauté Minimal Luxuries Established, $700 at Nordstrom (nordstrom.ca).