Slow Sell

Spanning 2,300 sqm on top of London department store Selfridges, 40 Duke is a bellweather of bricks-and-mortar retail. This hybrid project – containing personal shopping suites, a members’ club, hospitality and events spaces and more – has been transformed by Nice Projects from what was formerly private staff offices.

It represents the antidote to a quick-fix, always-on digital store, fulfilling the need for a slower, more personal experience – or what Selfridges’ Judd Crane calls “a place for discovery and meaningful interaction, which for us epitomises the value of spending time wisely.”

For Crane, the store’s executive buying and brand director, 40 Duke “expands the scope of the service in a way Selfridges has never before been able to offer – and in a way I don’t think anywhere else can. Customers want to engage with product and brands in a more personal, more relaxed and more immersive way, with more time and more attention.”

Membership is linked to the Selfridges Unlocked programme, with tiered access according to your spending. Nice Projects’ Sacha Leong, who worked with co-founder Simone McEwan on the project, says that he looked not to retail or members’ clubs for design inspiration, but to “those beautiful Milanese apartments full of incredible design pieces and details from all time periods – a space to inspire and to celebrate beautiful things.”

Unlike an apartment or members’ club, 40 Duke is also a shoppable experience, made to inspire and be explored: Nice Projects and Selfridges worked with The Future Perfect on specialist pieces in the public areas, and with Cassina for furniture for the terrace. There are classic brands such as Tacchini and Venini, but also some more avant-garde names: the private dining room features a custom-made ceramic table by Dutch designer Floris Wubben, while Leong looked to Belgian designers Studio Élémentaires to create a moving light installation above the bar.

The studio has used stone as a signature material – a nod to those Milanese apartments and a signifier of luxury. Red travertine is used in the lift lobbies and for a bespoke reception desk, while yellow onyx, employed for features such as the bar’s curving top, is a reference to Selfridges’ unmistakably bold branding colour.

The personal shopping suites and spaces – there are 24 in total, serviced by a staff of 60 – are at the heart of the project. “They were so much fun to design,” says Leong, who has made each one not just comfortable and welcoming but with different furnishings and features so that there’s always something new to discover. Coloured carpet runs along the floor then curves up the wall, and custom sliding partitions have been finished in a range of materials, from cork to brushed stainless steel and timber veneer.

Not all shoppers are the same, so flexibility is built in: “At the beginning of the design, we spent a lot of time observing the previous personal shopping offer and interviewing the staff, to fully understand the complex operational brief,” says Leong. “Selfridges also had a large amount of detailed data about the diverse typologies of their shoppers. Through clever planning, the suites and studios can be linked for larger groups and within the two wings; they can also be zoned off to create a private cluster of four to six suites for even larger parties.”

That flexibility is a recurring feature. “The members’ event spaces had to work hard for a variety of events, and custom banquettes were designed to be able to be moved and reconfigured,” continues Leong. “All the rooms flow into each other, but when required can be closed off but still have separate access to be serviced. Even the Floris Wubben ceramic table for 14 people was designed to be disassembled in parts and moved if needed.”

This is a complete sensory world, the definition of the ‘experiential’ offering that retailers are employing to counter the shallowness of digital. Bang & Olufsen and Samsung have provided the tech; Perfumer H has created a signature scent; and the playlist comes courtesy of Paris’ Pierre-Arthur Michau aka DJ PAM.

“The great thing about Selfridges is that since the day we opened in 1909, a guiding principle of the brand has been to challenge the status quo, truly championing experiential retail,” says Judd Crane. In 40 Duke, Nice Projects has created the ultimate hangout – made to feel like, almost coincidentally, you can spend big here, too.