Vandella — Instinct
A temporary mall environment for the launch of Vandella’s Instinct collection, designed with Grow Projects: seven abayas, a fitting suite, a lounge and café, and a counter for the house’s handcrafted bracelets, conceived for off-site fabrication and rapid assembly within a compressed launch programme.
The brief described a collection that moves before it speaks, and the design sets the conventions of the pop-up aside in its favour. The seven pieces are placed at the centre of the plan, each on its own ground and under its own light; arrival, fitting, and pause are arranged around them. Nothing is sold from a fixture. The collection is the room.
DIUM / Vandella — InstinctTHE COLLECTION IS THE ROOM.
First concept
The first reading housed each garment within its own pale portal — concealed light inside, a museum’s precision outside — and treated the plan as a landscape to be crossed rather than a shop to be browsed.
The Visit
The fitting rooms are conceived as enclosed, roofed volumes — the one moment of complete privacy on an open mall floor — and the lounge and café slow the visit to the pace of a conversation. The primary elements are fabricated off-site and assembled on the floor with minimal disruption, so that a space of this quality could be in place within the launch programme.
Developed Design
The second reading took the portals away. The pieces stand on open plinths in the earth tones of the collection itself, fluted screens replace the frames, and woven rugs underfoot fix each piece to its place. The structure became lighter and the atmosphere warmer; the discipline of the centre was kept.
Working together