Brand old

Vintage has made it from the fringe to the high street, as big brands decorate their stores with reclaimed materials. But if you scratch the surface is there any substance? Clare Dowdy asks what we’re buying into.

The wall tiles are left over from when the place was a restaurant. Old Moroccan oil tins, upholstered with 1960s floral print, are mixed in with retro tables bought off eBay. It may all sound a bit Heath Robinson, but ‘vintage’ has become the décor of choice for a whole host of high street shops. Healthy fast food chain Leon, outdoor company Timberland and fashion brand White Stuff, for instance, are all in on the reclaimed, recycled and repurposed act.

So are they just jumping on a retro-aesthetic bandwagon, or saying something more substantive about their sustainable sensitivities?

The environments they’re creating certainly seem to go against the grain of conventional chain rollouts; established wisdom dictates that each outlet should look exactly alike, and be as quick, easy and cost effective as possible to deck out. In reality a ‘standard shop-fit’ usually means gutting the existing interiors and bringing in brand new flooring and lighting, along with custom-made merchandising units and furniture. It’s ruthlessly efficient – and if it’s high on both waste creation and materials use, well, that’s just the price you pay.

Not so, however, for these quirkier designs, which are deliberately looking to invoke values like durability, individuality and a distinctively local feel. Some re-fits go the whole hog and barely touch a thing, incorporating discarded packing cases or existing flooring into their design. In others the effort is more cosmetic, using second-hand pieces to decorate a newly fitted store.

Take Leon, a London-based operation whose mantra is tasty, seasonal yet fast food. Each Leon outlet is meant to feel more like an intimate local café than part of a chain. So the founders brought in French-American designer Bambi Sloan, whose reputation is built on sourcing unexpected objets trouvées from small French flea markets. “She brings that maverick, non-shop-fit feel,” says CEO Henry Dimbleby.

And when her finds are installed, they reinforce the look that the site renovation has already worked hard to create. “The interiors are cool and style savvy but with personality and individuality,” explains Dan Rowe of creative consultancy Dave, which worked on Leon’s brand positioning. “Sourcing interesting bits of furniture adds to that individuality.”

Timberland’s new Marketplace concept is after a similar effect – designed to marry the idea of sustainable sourcing of its products (complete with eco credits on its shoeboxes) with the ‘brand values’ of its store interiors. When a new store opened on London’s King’s Road in the old Chelsea Kitchen, designers Checkland Kindleysides exposed the original tiles, left the well-worn floorboards, and peppered the place with tables from antique markets. Repurposing existing features and old furniture, says Jeff Kindleysides, leads to innovations and ingenuity in design terms that you don’t get when you start from scratch. And fixtures and fittings are sourced locally whenever possible. “We don’t want to ship things around the world,” he says, “because that goes against the grain.”

“The jury is still out on whether it’s something that can be put on (or taken off) as passing fashion dictates”

Here, however, he comes up against a big paradox in all this image-making: an international retail chain with global supply networks, trying to hook into the ‘local look’ as emblematic of its values. There are plenty of sceptics who say this just won’t wash. There are also some basic logistical issues to be considered. As Timberland’s worldwide retail general merchandising manager Dave Powers admits, “it’s more cost effective to do a cut-out store design, but we keep the reclaimed materials in stock and recycle them between stores”.

White Stuff, unlike Timberland, has no specific policy on sustainability, but its stores are similarly fitted out with old items of furniture – a look chosen to reflect its shoppers’ taste, and the vintage flavour of the clothes themselves. “Our target customers are in their mid-30s plus, so they really relate to the vintage, slightly retro décor of our unique stores,” says head of creative Lee Cooper. “The vintage pieces also reflect our core values of ‘quality’ and ‘quirky’, and we are recycling pieces rather than paying a shop-fit company to knock up some cheap modern piece, so we are doing a (tiny) bit of green stuff too!”

The company’s Bath store boasts retro chandeliers from The Loft Antiques in Bridport, Dorset. Around London a lot of sourcing happens in Brixton’s junk shops and Essex reclamation yards. But this junkshop styling is not without its own challenges. “It takes a strong understanding of what you stand for to do it with panache, and stop it looking like a bloody jumble sale,” says Rowe at Dave.

So will our high streets increasingly come to look this way? It’s by no means the only image in town – and the jury is still out on whether it’s something that can be put on (or taken off) as passing fashion dictates. If so, it’s only the most temporary of blessings that outlets can be fitted out this way at relatively lower environmental cost. But if customers are really identifying with the (outward) nature of these businesses, they might expect similar values to be embodied in the way they operate. In which case the Timberlands and Leons of this world could find themselves not just on board a bandwagon, but riding a horse with really sustainable legs.

Clare Dowdy is a writer on branding and design for a number of publications including Wallpaper* and the Financial Times.

21 July 2008

Clare Dowdy