Burdifilek Design a Store for the Consumer-Curator

Snapshot: At the crossroads of entertainment and fashion - Seoul’s Rodeo Street - is The Gallerie West Hall Luxury Women’s Store. From Toronto’s Burdifilek design firm, the space presents a “boundaries removed” image of fashion, where the customer explores unimpeded by the directive of brand.

The Gallerie West Hall Luxury Women’s Store is driven by a desire to propel the Korean shopping experience from its archetypal product-consumer space towards that of a shopping destination. The destination does not speak in the language of price or sale, but rather draws in to the product, lighting and putting it on display as a precious artifact. Then add to this experience innovative spatial design - unexpected in the black matte curves of walls like polished meteors - and you can’t help but stay, intrigued to find what is within. Customers are invited to meander through the space and be led, above all, by their senses.

Walk in and you greet low pedestals, milk white tops on a sandy wood base, or brushed aluminum tesselating in its own shadow like the contours of the facing geodesic walls. Each element is subdued, tamed perhaps by the neutral palette. The meteoric black is perhaps most striking, yet serves to draw out the black detailing of the clothes and accessories, elements which themselves point to the cool classicism of the wares. Burdifilek is known for its lush simplicity in design. Wide, echoic spaces draped in white. Gold accents wavering beneath fluorescent lighting. Retail is luxury, and unforgettably so with the Toronto design firm’s touch. The complexity behind multiple design components is distilled, and measured out simply under the direction of Diego Burdy and Paul Filek. Here, between novel accessories, slim metallic étagères, and wedge-topped pedestals, the visitor is invited to curate her own shopping experience. A toast - to the adventure of fashion.