Timeless Inspiration

Today, shopping destinations cannot be regarded by their developers as merely a place to shop. Malls and department stores must think of themselves as a ‘Third Place,’ or a social space outside of home and work, where people can gather, socialise, and build relationships in an informal and casual environment. Physical retail can serve as a powerful antidote to the global loneliness epidemic, for instance. A Gallup survey revealed that over one in five people worldwide felt lonely “a lot of the day yesterday.”

In response to this pervasive sense of isolation, brick-and-mortar retail spaces are evolving to serve as hubs for social interaction. The most perceptive retailers are recognising the importance of creating environments that foster community engagement. 

As the world grapples with rising feelings of loneliness, the role of physical retail spaces in providing opportunities for social connection has become increasingly significant. In a growingly isolated world, social experience itself has become a luxury. The brands that will thrive are those that recognise retail as an experience rather than a transaction. 

Le Bon Marché, one of the world’s first true department stores, has long understood a truth many retailers are only now rediscovering: brick-and-mortar retail is far more than a place of transaction – it is a place of transformation. A space where culture, community, and commerce intersect, and where shopping becomes social theatre.

Today, Le Bon Marché continues to embody this idea through programming that redefines what a retail experience can be. Its atrium – once a marvel of 19th-century ironwork – now serves as a dynamic stage for immersive installations, contemporary art, and ever-evolving pop-ups. These activations do more than create “Instagrammable moments”; they infuse the store with cultural currency and emotional resonance.

In 2016, the store exhibited ‘Er Xi’ by Ai Weiwei, filling the atrium with mythical creatures crafted from bamboo and papier de soie – a poetic and politically charged collaboration with one of the world’s most controversial artists. In 2018, MANA and Scott Oster’s ‘Le Cube’ brought skateboarding inside a translucent, floating structure in the heart of the store, turning shopping into an urban performance. Playful interventions like Leandro Erlich’s optical illusions added a whimsical twist to the iconic escalators, reinforcing that cultural engagement doesn’t always require spectacle – just imagination.

These moments build loyalty not by pushing product, but by creating memory. That same philosophy can be seen in the ‘2024 Paper People’ installation by illustrator Jean Jullien and the Paris pop-up, which celebrated the Parisian lifestyle through niche fashion brands, design objects, cafés, and culinary activations – positioning the store as a cultural curator for the city itself.

This retail-as-cultural-platform mindset is echoed in a broader trend among luxury brands. Dior’s Galerie Dior in Paris is a permanent museum-like space that traces the house’s creative legacy through immersive exhibition design, elevating brand storytelling to an art form. Similarly, Gucci Cosmos – a traveling showcase that’s part-boutique, part-archive, part-art installation – brings Gucci’s history to life in a multisensory way that’s both educational and emotionally charged.

Together, these examples signal a new era of brick-and-mortar: one where the store becomes a stage, the shopper a participant, and culture the real currency. In this model, retail is not just a destination – it’s a shared experience that invites return, reflection, and connection.

If brick-and-mortar retail is to thrive in the experience economy, food and beverage (F&B) is no longer a footnote – it’s a front-row act. Across department stores and shopping malls, F&B has grown from an amenity into a critical revenue driver and cultural magnet. Real estate data suggests that F&B’s average share of space in a shopping centre has more than doubled in the last decade in certain markets, and can reach up to 20 percent of total retail leasing in a mall. But success in this space is about more than square footage. It’s about sensory curation, storytelling, and strategic detail.

Mall landlord Brookfield Properties told CNBC late last year, for instance, that in some of its shopping centres, F&B accounts for up to 30 percent of total leasing.

Harrods offers perhaps the clearest example of how food can define – and elevate – a retail brand. Originally founded as a humble grocer and tea merchant in Stepney in the 1830s, Harrods has turned that heritage into a cornerstone of its identity. Today, its food halls are not only retail spaces but theatrical environments. Under Art Deco and Art Nouveau ceilings, ingredients are arranged like fine jewellery. Culinary preparation is on full display, transforming shopping into spectacle.

The broader industry trend reflects this thinking: food is no longer just sustenance; it’s performance. Grand food halls evoke emotional responses through Belle Époque architecture, immersive lighting, and open kitchens that showcase craft and provenance. In Japan, the famed depachika (department store food basements) of retailers like Isetan Shinjuku have long celebrated this model. There, food fairs known as bussanten constantly rotate seasonal and regional delicacies – turning everyday shopping into culinary education. The experience extends vertically: customers are encouraged to take their purchases to the rooftop garden, where the act of eating becomes a leisurely, scenic ritual. This strategic placement of F&B experiences is a smart use of vertical space and a subtle cue for movement through multi-level environments.

Meanwhile, in the Mall of the Emirates, the Fashion Dome exemplifies the power of F&B when it merges with architecture. Here, vaulted ceilings, dramatic lighting, and high-design eateries turn dining into an Instagrammable moment – a feast for both palate and lens. In such environments, F&B transcends utility. It becomes emotional, visual, and deeply shareable.

In a competitive landscape, food and beverage offer retailers a shortcut to relevance – but not a shortcut to quality. Only when executed with craft, care, and creativity, F&B can transform retail environments into destinations. It draws crowds, slows them down, deepens engagement, and crucially gives them a reason to return.

Amid all the innovation in retail – AI, personalisation, omnichannel – one thing remains constant: the most successful stores deliver great service. It’s the foundational value proposition of the department store, dating back to its origins in the 19th century: help consumers find what they’re looking for and inspire them to discover what they didn’t know they needed.

Service today is not just about politeness at the counter. It’s about operational excellence and emotional intelligence, enabled by both people and systems. Key service metrics driving satisfaction include staff knowledge and attentiveness, checkout efficiency, cleanliness and comfort, and ease of arrival, which includes parking, wayfinding and welcoming entrances.

According to PwC, for instance, more than 70 percent of global customers say they desire human interaction in the shopping experience.

Leading department stores are re-investing in service as a differentiator. Printemps’ new NYC flagship features personal shopping suites and concierge-style services, blending luxury fashion with a hospitality-inspired approach. In Canada, Holt Renfrew offers valet service, beauty spas, and stylists that create tailored customer journeys – supported by staff trained in both fashion and service etiquette.

The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore exemplify how luxury retail in Asia integrates service and tech. Guests can access multilingual assistance, reserve dining and shopping experiences through one digital interface, and even have luxury purchases delivered to their hotel rooms, blending retail and hospitality into a seamless whole.

This crossover is no coincidence. Luxury hospitality brands like LVMH’s Belmond offer a model worth studying. Known for intuitive, anticipatory service, Belmond emphasises consistency, personalisation, and human warmth – all elements increasingly expected in high-end retail environments. As LVMH blurs the lines between fashion, hotels, and experience, it’s clear that hospitality isn’t a separate industry – it’s a standard.

The return to service is more than nostalgic – it’s strategic. In a competitive market, where digital convenience is only a swipe away, physical retail must deliver more than products. It must deliver care, craft, and consistency. Retailers who excel here don’t just drive sales – they build loyalty, advocacy, and long-term brand equity.

The true competitive edge of physical retail lies in its ability to create moments of wonder. This idea – that shopping should spark joy, provoke curiosity, and delight the senses – is not new. It was embedded in the DNA of the original department store visionaries like Harry Gordon Selfridge, who famously declared, “Shopping should be fun.” But today, this philosophy is being reimagined for a new generation, through bold activations, immersive storytelling, and collaborations that blur the lines between commerce and culture.

Selfridges has long championed the role of surprise in driving emotional connection and foot traffic. Its Corner Shop – strategically placed at the nexus of Oxford Street and Duke Street – serves as a high-visibility playground for retail experimentation. These activations aren’t just pop-ups; they’re statements. From the Joke Shop, which offered a nostalgic yet irreverent take on British humour, to Supermarket, a vision of a “shop of the future” where luxury meets sustainability, Selfridges turns temporary retail into a spectacle of ideas. 

Most recently, Obsession 2025 and the new Selfridges Lounge further blur the boundaries between culture, hospitality, and shopping – proving that delight can be designed into every square metre of a store.

The key is contrast: unexpected juxtapositions that create emotional peaks. This ethos drives many of the most memorable brand collaborations today. Take Louis Vuitton’s 2023 collaboration with Yayoi Kusama – a radical evolution of their original 2012 partnership. Whereas the first collection focused on applying Kusama’s iconic polka dots to products, the second created an entire universe. Store façades from Harrods to Louis Vuitton Paris were taken over by dot-covered installations and surreal sculptures of Kusama herself. From global window displays to hospitality extensions like Harrods’ Polka Dot Patisserie, the campaign transcended traditional retail, becoming an experiential ecosystem that invited participation, not just purchase.

The success of Kusama x Louis Vuitton lies not only in aesthetics, but in its scale and theatre. These are not pop-ups: They are retail destinations. By combining sculptural art, digital campaigns, and curated environments, the collaboration demonstrates how physical space can become an extension of an artist’s imagination, while also amplifying brand storytelling.

In the same spirit, Marni’s global expansion, led by Sybarite from 2002, transformed brand expression into a travelling exhibition. Each site-specific activation reflects its locale while reinforcing Marni’s eclectic identity – a nomadic retail philosophy that invites global consumers into a playful and unexpected journey through the brand’s universe. Through understanding that delight is strategic, these activations are not just about novelty – they’re about crafting peak moments that consumers remember, photograph, and share.

The remaining traditional department stores must ask, ‘What business are we in any way, and why will I matter in five years?’ This is an industry that can discover insights from outside this sector, where these non-essential retailers may want to explore a network of one-of-a-kind destinations uniquely merchandised, designed, and operated with a heavy dose of local wonder. The hospitality industry figured this out more than 20 years ago.

As we know, many department stores — but not all — have lost their unique DNA that defined their relevance when they chose to pursue profit through scaling, mergers, and operational optimisation. Today, one of the best-in-class, internationally recognised department stores is Le Bon Marché in Paris. This is a destination with a long-standing reputation as a cultural landmark on Paris’ Left Bank. More than a store, it embodies the Left Bank’s spirit — artistically, culturally, and emotionally charged.

Many old-world retailers have lost their commitment to their narrative, the story that binds everything they do. In my recent work with LVMH’s Moët Hennessy, preparing a Master Plan for one of the group’s premier Maison Brand Homes in the Champagne region countryside and a winery in Napa Valley, California; we walked the sites not just with an architect’s eyes, but with the sensitivity of a storyteller.

The rich history of the buildings, landscape, the light, the sounds, smells, and the wind — everything has a voice. If you listen and look carefully at the customer, the site, and the buildings, they tell you what to do.

The traditional retail industry’s preoccupation with sales per square foot overlooks a more meaningful metric: share of time — the true currency of engagement. If people are not eating, sleeping, or working, they are likely investing their time in experiences.

This has become retail’s new playing field: not simply selling goods, but capturing minutes, hours, even days by evoking emotions that turn into lasting memories.

The way to grow this share of time — and ultimately extend it into share of mind and share of wallet — lies in identifying the elusive formula of relevance and meaning. This does not reside in a product or object alone, but in the narrative and the experience it enables. It is about transforming the physical store into a place of social relevance, where newness is continually unfolding. 

At Le Bon Marché, newness is woven directly into the cultural calendar. In 2018, when the team sought to capture the laid-back spirit of Los Angeles, they built a three-story skate ramp in the atrium, anchoring a series of exhibitions and products around the city’s skate culture. It was not a promotional gimmick; it was a curated cultural moment.

Decades earlier, Neiman Marcus pioneered this idea under Stanley Marcus, launching two-week immersive “Fortnights” that brought evolving global cultural references into each store. These were not just retail events, but cultural activations that built attraction, loyalty, and relationships far beyond the transactional.

Today, Restoration Hardware offers a masterclass in this evolution. CEO Gary Friedman has stretched the brand beyond conventional retail — building multi-level mansions as showrooms, opening restaurants and hotels, even launching a private jet and yacht for members. Through continually creating high calibre and highly relevant surprises, Friedman has gradually built a cultural universe around the brand — one that has made Restoration Hardware one of the most admired lifestyle brands in the world.

Maintaining this kind of relevance and newness is not a seasonal promotion. It is an operating strategy.

The imperative is to keep the store physically compelling and programmatically alive — to bring people something they have not seen, felt, or thought about elsewhere. That is the foundation of share of mind — and ultimately, share of wallet.

Amid the excitement around “experience,” we must not fall into the trap of meaningless design spectacles. True excellence is driven into every detail as a set of non-negotiable standards and executed with operational excellence; no detail is too small.

Transactions should be seamless. Fitting rooms should feel like personal sanctuaries. Cleanliness, sightlines, lighting, temperature, scent, music, world — class storytelling, and visual merchandising — these are not afterthoughts. They are a store’s unique handwriting.

Trained service and staff must be instilled in the art of anticipation. While costly, this is beyond what is expected. It is a fundamental necessity.

Retailers often ask if such gestures “convert.” But that is the wrong question. The right question is: Did it matter? Did it connect? Did it build a reason to return?

The Four Seasons model offers a powerful parallel for exceptional retail. Each hotel reflects its setting — mountains in  Chiang Mai, savannahs in Kenya, and beaches in St. Barts — while religiously maintaining standards that establish trust and exceed expectations on every visit. Staff are trained in the art of anticipation, not just service. It is this combination of consistency and surprise that builds love, brands, and trust.

Too few retailers operate this way. But those who do — Hermès, Apple, Restoration Hardware, Le Bon Marché, the new Tiffany — are not just surviving. They are leading because they understand that experience is not a campaign. It is a culture.

An iconic architect once said, “It takes a great client to do  great work.” The consulting industry can only take a client so far, borrowing from an abundance of experts who expound upon and replay what’s new, who is doing what, why it matters, and how their thought leadership positions are the best and brightest.

The role of the business strategist, retail and merchant consultant, designer, and architect is critically important as a retailer’s toolbox, facilitating the exploration and creation of uncompromising, discerning solutions that can be considered and implemented. But ultimately, it requires an inspired leadership team, ownership, a board of directors and developers to lead with a viable vision and a conviction to innovate in creating, regaining, and maintaining relevance.

Courage is not a cliché. Informed and inspired leadership is not a nice-to-have, it is a requirement to survive.