^^^ Those shops look like private homes and you’re the Bling Ring trespassing/squatting/single-white-femaling when you enter and try on clothes LOL
(Calgary is my own private Idaho. So gorgeous with the prairies, mountains, endless sky, wilderness, wild horses… cowboys… I’ve shot there since 2013 and I always dream I’m directing these sprawling epics spanning Americana...)
I've never realized how much Burberry under Bailey stores looked like a Department Store. So tacky!
I used to love Nicolas Ghesquiere's era Balenciaga stores. They were just amazing. Super pretentious but so well executed. The fact that he worked with an artist made a difference. I think that his clothes kinda clash with the Peter Marino's aesthetic nowadays.
I also used to love Tom Ford old NYC store. It was so moody and his early womenswear stuff looked perfect in that environment. It's still fine today but it has less personality. It's less heavy maybe.
Dries store at Quai Malaquai is still today one of the best current store design. I just like moody stores.
The Hermes Toronto store is the definition of what i don't like. I hate Hermes stores anyway
We should gracefully accept that Tom is past that era in his career/life where he is so impossibly driven having spawned that effortless Gucci-template which still remains so relevant 25 years on. I buy Tom Ford simply for the long-term self-indulgence and not for any short-term statement these days. And when I accept that I like the occasional jacket/coat from him (and never those tacky dinner jackets that the middle-age gays seem to pine for the way a middle-age woman pines for a Birkin)— not because it’s Tom Ford, but simply because it’s a jacket/coat I like with absolutely no outside influence.
Anyway, Tom has become a far more stellar filmmaker these days than a fashion designer: I’d rather see another gorgeous film from him than an influential fashion collection— which means nothing nowadays unless your shows and SM is polluted with young celebrities dripping in your maxed-out logowear— and thank God he doesn’t do that. He’s just not that into fashion anymore, it’s clear. And his stores are also reflective of this and I’m good with that; I mean, I’ve noticed that even the way he dresses is…
off, these days. Look at his mom stone-washed jeans, and his weirdly puckered tuxedo pants that strangely look like he’s wearing oversized women’s pants… The Tom of the Gucci-days would
never.
(BTW, Proenza’s store alarmingly resembles Urban Outfitters once you imagine their pieces replaced by stacks of graphic tees and Adidas kicks LOL Down to the chainlink-esque dividers and that concrete staircase, it’s too similar… And in sympatico with Mullet: that MaxMara staircase is the stuff of Wilt Chamberlain machismo, swinging dreams.)