That businesses need to prioritise customer-centric designs for their products and also spaces to enhance user experience is not a new concept in the world of design. But do all create a space relevant to their brand and stimulate a feeling of appreciation?
At The Dhan Mill (TDM), Delhi’s luxurious hub for design and culture in upmarket Chhatarpur, brands have the aesthetic freedom to highlight their stories of individuality and functionality and control the look of their stores in distinctive design language.
A view of the store.
Kanika Goyal, founder and creative director of the neo-luxury apparel line, KGL, is one of the latest address holders at TDM. “Stores need to reflect the brand’s conceptual ethos, and the interiors should complement the products on display. Everything revolves around how you make the customer feel inside your store,” she says.
After a decade in the fashion industry, Goyal felt it was time to launch her first standalone store as an immersive extension of her pret line, which blurs boundaries between streetwear and luxury and is known for its playful paradoxes in terms of colour, texture, feel, and look.
Kanika Goyal
“I am a Chandigarh girl totally influenced by Swiss-French architects Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret; their work was grounded in minimalism and simplicity while designing and constructing the city in post-Partition India,” she says to underline how design-driven she’s been to consciously bring alive her brand’s identity.
Inspired from brutalist architecture and surreal art
To understand the creation of the KGL store, it is important to understand the thought-provoking label launched in 2014 and its inspiration from psychology and metaphor, brutalist architecture and surreal art. Recognised for intelligent use of colour and texture, humour and introspection in her structured designs and fluid flows, Goyal has showcased at New York and London Fashion Weeks and collaborated with Disney over the years.
As a couture designer, she believes customer experience in the luxury sector is not limited to purchase of a product alone. “It goes far beyond because a lasting impression is critical to brand loyalty,” she says.
A view of the store.
Goyal envisioned her store in TDM as a space to encapsulate KGL’s evolution, philosophy, and vision. Her approach was to combine functionality with aesthetics, focusing on the comfort of familiarity of her regular customers and accessibility for the new.
The use of the very unusual palette of grey with warm concrete tones for the entire 1,000 sq. ft. store, she says, is her Boho influence of growing up in Chandigarh, the dream city of India’s first Prime Minister Nehru, who wanted it to be unfettered from traditions of the past and embrace modernism to represent the country’s future agenda.
A view of the store.
Chandigarh makes you understand Le Corbusier’s design of a modern city centred around major concerns such as comfort, rational living, work activity, mobility of the people and care for the body and mind. Corbusier implemented urban principles with multi-layered systems, residential sectors, landscaping, tree-planting, and pedestrian walkways. The way Chandigarh symbolises modernity is peculiar, feels Goyal.
Most landmark buildings in the city remain soaked in beige-grey and define the city’s social, economic and cultural identity in unconventional patterns dominated by fluid lines and arches determined by design.
Zen-like expression
Goyal chose to adhere to this concept of efficient space, shape, light and colour so that her store could serve its function without the clutter of unnecessary ornamentation. There is no excessive bling when you step inside the KGL store; the space blends what looks like raw concrete with angular lines, floor-to-ceiling mirror and custom fixtures.
A view of the store.
A Zen-like stillness rushes in and helps to shift the focus to the brand telling its story and connecting with the customer.
“Designing it has been an emotional journey for me; I have tried to make every detail count,” says Goyal. The famous ‘Chandigarh Chair’ by Pierre Jeanneret, placed at the mouth of the store, has the letter ‘k’ crafted in Gurmukhi below the two arms to give it more strength and support. The elegance of the utilitarian piece of beauty, the ergonomic design with a mesh back and seating establishes the Chandigarh connection.
A view of the store.
The skylight panel lending length and brightness to the store, the custom stainless-steel cash console, the door handles, and the brooches on staff uniforms are part of our design story, says Goyal.
There is a curated nook, the ‘brand library’, where on display are objects that connect fashion and culture. It compels you to pause and look at one of Dali’s surreal paintings, Ando’s sculpture, a black mini Keekee bag, T-shirts from Goyal’s diffusion line and art books.
Noticeable is the pair of dumbbells with ‘13’ etched on it. “I find beauty in duality. Read it in Hindi as ‘tera’, which means it’s all yours,” says Goyal.
In the cement-finish grey store, the only patch of colour is in the trial room — green floor and a deep plum chair, she has deliberately used “to introduce a cool and weird element of playfulness”.
Goyal has purposefully kept the store design minimal. “It makes the space look less busy and my garments, with lot of fun embellishments, maximise the impact,” she says.
The visual drama inside is matched with an eye-catching fabricated rock placed outside the store. Grey in colour, it measures more than 15 feet in height and gives a rugged look with a spiritual vibe. The magnitude it exudes is like the brand’s, says Goyal, who studied space design at NIFT and apparel design at Parson’s New York.
After 16 illustrious apprenticeships at Prada, Marchesa, Adidas and Bibhu Mohapatra, she dived into exquisite garments with a subversive design language embodying youthful and free-spirit.
KGL at Dhan Mill marks her milestone, combining creativity and strategy for a tangible narrative. Kanika hopes the audience will appreciate and engage here. “It is to slow down and unravel methodically because the brand experience needs to live beyond the product,” she says.
KGL is at Alley 3, The Dhan Mill, 287-288, 100 Feet Road, Pocket D, Chhatarpur.
