The new Giuliano Fujiwara flagship store in Milan perfectly blends a forward Japanese design doctrine with Italian style fundamentals to create an intriguing new space that looks like it imploded into one glorious, architecturally skewed mess

The Japanese have a most peculiar way of seeing things. They find design in abstraction, simplicity in clutter, and beauty in distortion. This is an aesthetic philosophy seen in most Japanese elements of design, but evident most recently in the new Milan flagship store of Giuliano Fujiwara.

The brand was first established in the late 80s as Fujiwara Design Studio by founder Yoshiaki Fujiwara, and was dedicated to the seamless merging of Japanese tastes and Italian sensibilities that combined the strengths of both cultures—avant-garde fashion and spot-on tailoring and construction. But the brand that had once received phenomenal success in the 80s and 90s was slowly losing its significance and share of the buying market to other Japanese names like Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, and Issey Miyake. Today, however, a whole new market is being re-introduced to the fashion house, thanks largely in part to the stellar efforts of Fujiwara’s new creative director, Japan-born, Swiss- and British-educated Masataka Matsumura, the mastermind behind the label’s riveting new collections, modern marketing efforts, and a global plan for updated visibility which includes the opening of this spanking new boutique. Matsumura tells DeZona.com, “ . . . the complete creation process together with all our new projects have been developed both in Milan and Tokyo. Milan is for us, and for me personally, an important and essential stage on the way to a vast international retail network. It is the ideal showcase, prestigious and with a strong emotional tie. We are very proud of having finally realized this project.”

Perfectly framed by rough concrete and steel, the shop looks almost like an art installation or a mobile that has collapsed and fallen precisely into place. 

Reflecting Giuliano Fujiwara’s hybrid design principles of the traditional with the modern, the Milan store is built into an old mansion in an antiqued yet fashionably chic area of the Italian city. The space is decidedly stark, angular, and futuristic in feel, and is a striking contrast to the aged and traditional look of the building’s Milanese facade. It is designed in such a way that it hides nothing, exposing the interiors for all to see—shoppers are instantly thrown into the world of the Japanese brand care of three massive street windows. Perfectly framed by rough concrete and steel, the shop looks almost like an art installation or a mobile that has collapsed and fallen precisely into place. The intriguing interiors of the store were conceptualized by Matsumura and with the design expertise of  Hiroyuki Matsunaka of designroom702 co., Ltd and Studio di Architettura Giovanni Pacciani. The store’s overall concept is taken from the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi which dictates that beauty is often found and expressed though imperfections—an object’s perfection found in the skewed, the distorted, and the insubstantial.

The look of the space, which holds the brand’s men’s clothing line and accessories in the ground floor and a private VIP area in the basement, essentially follows an in-your-face color scheme of shocking white, black, and slate. Contorted steel tubes spread out for display purposes, random pieces of shiny cut black panels, and a modern flooring all give the illusion that the store was sucked into a vortex and spat out to produce a skewed retail layout. Fiber cement slabs are laid on the floor to mimic a traditional herringbone pattern, while deconstructed, black shiny panels are seemingly spread randomly across the space to enforce a reflective, almost whimsical effect that keeps the shopper enthralled, engaged, and giving the clothing a dynamic and exciting dimension. Overall, the 270 sq. meter space is minimalist and with a bleakness that is filled with interesting conceptual detailing that allows the clothes and merchandise to stand out but, at the same time, blend with the sculptural elements of the interiors.