Serious About Summer, Barneys Opens Pop-up Shop
Home is on a bit of a hiatus at Barneys New York‘s ninth floor at the Madison Avenue flagship, where a 1,630-square-foot pop-up shop occupies the front of the area and screams, Sun! It’s a soup-to-nuts approach to summer across multiple categories, from apparel, accessories and beauty to tabletop and books.
Set designer Stefan Beckman gathered all manner of warm weather items for the shop, which he dubbed Heatwave. “It’s the best of what Barneys has to offer for the summer,” Beckman said. “There’s a bit of everything. That’s the way people shop now.”
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Beckman himself provided one of the season’s necessary objects — the beach towel, or four or five — from his newly launched collection, Lateral Objects, which is exclusive to Barneys. Priced $195, the towels have bold pop colors inspired by California art in the Sixties and the Supergraphic design movement of the Seventies.
“I wanted to think of the pop-up like an exhibition, even though it’s not an exhibition,” said Beckman, who painted plywood signs with colorful graphics and the word, Heatwave, and treated his towels like canvases mounting them on plywood frames.
“We’ve taken the entire front section of the home area. It was important to really make an impact and that it wasn’t a tiny area,” he said. Building on the theme, Beckman painted a table yellow and featured Thomas Fuchs blue and white dinner plates, $18; Lisa Perry reversible Love, Fun and Enjoy vinyl placemats, $28, and Chendorf’s Sorsi tall drinking glasses, which can be packed up and taken on a picnic.
For inspiration, there’s Assouline’s “Designing the Hamptons,” “Ibiza Bohemia,” “Turqoise Coast” and “Mykonos Blues.” Those lucky enough to be visiting one of the locals, can take along Eugenia Kim’s Sunny straw hat, $425; Solid & Striped‘s Michelle scooped-back one-piece swimsuit, $170; Suicoke nylon slides, $225, and Mana St. Tropez’ Beach Babe big straw tote bag, $375.
Beckman, who’s been doing set design since the late Nineties, recently worked with Nicolas Ghesquière, Louis Vuitton’s artistic director of women’s collections, to prepare the TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport for the brands’ cruise collection show. “Nicolas wanted to fill the space with plants and make it look like they took over the whole space,” Beckman said. “There were vines and plants everywhere, and we created a plant wall outside to make it feel like it was one world.”
Beckman’s career has evolved to include fashion shoots with photographers such as Steven Meisel. “I got a call from Marc Jacobs and started working with him on his shows,” Beckman said. “It started another part of my career. I want to do anything that’s creative and interesting, whether it’s a pop-up or a show or a shoot.”
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