Anna Petrova's brief, in one line: "I don't sell clothes. I sell the way they make you feel."
The store had to feel like a gallery without feeling cold — a place where the garments, not the architecture, did the talking. We opened the ceiling with a skylight, wrapped the walls in cream lime plaster, and laid travertine on the floor so the room reads as one quiet, continuous surface.
Retail design is theatre direction: the customer is the lead actor, the clothes are the props.
Display is handled by oak plinths and a slim brass rail — nothing fixed, everything moveable, so the stock can be re-staged weekly without the store ever feeling rearranged. The fitting rooms are deliberately small, warm and dim, with theatrical bulbs that flatter the same way studio light does. Customers, Anna reports, spend more time in them than in the gallery.
Sales per square metre are up 38% against the old store on the same street. But Anna's favourite metric is different: people who come in "just to look" stay an average of nineteen minutes. In retail, that is a lifetime.
Photography note: the store was designed so that the light changes character across the day — sharp at noon, amber at five. The evening customers are the ones who keep coming back.
