Persol arrives in Milan

In expectation of the launch of the New Persol Concept Store, a temporary has opened last Saturday for one month, offering the opportunity to visit the venue of this New Concept Store. In September, the brand will be opening a long-awaited concept store in Europe, in the historic centre of Milan, 100 miles from where the brand’s first pair of glasses was crafted just over 100 years ago in Turin.

This new 100 square metre concept store, designed by David Chipperfield Architects Milan, will represent a contemporary expression of the Persol way of life.A highly anticipated counterpart to the other Persol store in Rodeo Drive in LA, the space will be opening at Via Fiori Chiari 16, in Milan’s Brera district.

With its cobbled streets, chic cafes, fortune tellers and secret courtyards, Brera encapsulates the quintessential Italian life. Home to the Palazzo Brera, where the Accademia di Brera and the city’s main public art gallery, the Pinacoteca di Brera, can be found, it is also where the city’s history and cognoscenti come together.

The temporary store is a series of consecutive spaces deprived of the previous superstructures and left unfinished, revealing the original flooring and ceiling as well as a granite column in the middle of the main room.

A table that runs sinuously along the perimeter of the spaces offers a display for the products. A series of lamps suspended on tracks guarantees high-performance lighting of both the space and products.

The idea behind the temporary store is to communicate the character of a Site undergoing renovation: the Old, represented by the exposed Architectural elements; the New, represented by the added Furnishing elements, reflecting the antithesis between tradition and innovation that is an essential part of Persol’s DNA.