Bordello Chic

One of the current rages in London is Bordello Chic — the retailing of women's lingerie by such upscale stores as Undressme, which features windows done up to resemble an Amsterdam sex shop. In another Bordello Chic moment, a Selfridge's department store window featured a peephole through which viewers could watch videos of women modeling lingerie. The women weren't Victoria's Secret-type models, but winners of a contest searching for everyday gals who wanted to strut their stuff.

Bordello Chic is just one of the retailing trends we learned about at a recent presentation by GDR Creative Intelligence, a London-based consulting agency. Astronaut Chic, a style of interior architecture that's all curves — not a straight line can be found on highly polished walls, ceilings, floors, or fixtures — is also becoming popular in retail environments. Another trend is to localization and customization. In one example, Levi's, the well-known blue jeans brand with a strong corporate identity, hired a British design team to create a retail store for its products that would make no mention of the company name. The result is a denim boutique that looks for all the world like it's owned by someone from the neighborhood. An example of customization involved a video rental store called Today Is Boring. Each membership card features a photo from a high school album (the member chooses the pic he or she wants) and the logo I Am Boring. And a coffee shop chain dispenses java in cups that read, "Cola Is for Wimps."

The point is that successful retailing today has to be fun and entertaining. It's all about engaging the consumer. Most of these examples can easily be adapted to the creative specialty retailer who knows that his or her customers aren't just buying products. They can do that at Wal-Mart.

You'll notice quite a change in the look of this month's Trends issue, in which we present the latest product design directions, color forecasts, and hot licenses, as well as a host of other information to help guide you into 2004. That's thanks to our new art director, Miguel Bravo, who has taken over the design responsibilities for Gifts & Dec. Miguel comes to us from an eyewear publication, where he had only two products to work with from issue to issue — frames and lenses. We think he's enjoying working with the endless SKUs of merchandise our industry has to offer.