Gentle Monster opens spectacular new store in London

South Korean luxury eyewear brand Gentle Monster began the first phase of a major European expansion plan on Friday when it opened a 450 sq m store in the heart of London’s West End. Future stores are planed for Paris and Dubai, with up to six new openings expected by 2019. Its expansion comes on the back of news last September that L Catterton Asia invested in IICombined, the owner and operator of the brand.

Gentle Monster new store London

Gentle Monster had been founded in 2011 by Jay Oh and Hankook Kim, and expanded steadily in recent years, although its standalone store numbers had only just edged into double-digits by last autumn. However, the pace has speeded up in recent months with the company having 17 stores before the London opening.

The new Argyll Street location in London underlines just why the brand is so appealing as it concentrates on the retail experience as much as the products. Gentle Monster Managing Director Garry Bott said: “We are very much focused on creating a sensory experience for the customer, even down to the individual fragrance for each of our flagship stores.

Every three minutes on the ground floor of a boutique on Argyll Street in Central London, a large gong sounds. The sound of its tremors reverberate around the space, causing the arms of mop-haired and pinecone-like warrior aliens to jolt into life.

Gentle Monster new store London

With this in mind, the London flagship follows a completely different design scheme to the brand’s other stores and ‘experience’ really is at the heart of the layout. The firm’s in-house robotic’s team created the concept that mixes aliens with martial arts, focusing more on the visual appeal of Kung Fu than on its ability to cause serious physical damage. The idea is that extra-terrestrials were “captivated by the beauty of Kung Fu, presented in the most unexpected client point-of-view throughout the two floors.”

An ‘active volcano’ and another robotic installation certainly add an interesting element to the Accessories hall. Robotics really makes up a key part of the company’s store strategy and so it’s no surprise that it invested in a robotics factory in Korea.

Gentle Monster new flagship store London

The robotics specialists there work in cooperation with the Gentle Monster store designers with Bott adding that “everything’s half assembled in HQ. And then it travels around the world to whatever destination we’re opening up in our flagships stores, and then our spatial design teams fully assemble everything on site.”

‘We were thinking about tiny alien beings obsessed with kung fu,’ explains Bott, of the London store’s retail concept. Gentle Monster is renowned for its innovative and imaginative approach to store design. Cue a harvest-inspired outpost in Downtown LA, complete with a gentle undulating rice field, a folklore-focused boutique in Guangzhou, China or a Singapore space inspired by the philosophy of Nietzsche.

Gentle Monster new store London

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Gentle Monster opens spectacular new store in London

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