On 2 May, Hermès celebrated the opening of their third UAE boutique on the second floor of Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Towers.
Designed by RDAI, the French agency responsible for the architecture of all Hermès stores worldwide since 1978, oversaw the store’s creation made to emulate Hermès flagship Paris store on 24, rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré within a space of 295 square metres. Visitors are invited to enter within a champagne claustra façade which opens up onto a luminous intimate space accessible via two separate, side-by-side entrances and flanked by tall vitrines.
Initially, visitors encounter the Silk, Perfume and Leather areas and then move on to the Jewellery and Watches section which is nestled opposite the Women’s Ready-to-Wear. The Art de table universe is central to the store, as it would be in any elegant home, and is graced by a chandelier and the modernist lines of Jean Michel Frank’s furniture. The Jewellery and Watch area is the store’s pivotal point. Its key position
is reinforced by the perspectival effects that have been created to lure the visitor to the area. The space is accentuated with warm tones of Cherry wood, display cabinets which are lined in pearl-beige Ottoman fabric and an intricate mosaic floor. The store brings together each metier from Hermès’s universe while allowing visitors privacy and space.
With its multiplicity of intimate spaces accessible through the cut outs in the walls and accentuated by differing ceiling heights, Hermès Abu Dhabi provides visitors with a sense of the interplay between the public and private realms. The rich visual effect of the flooring, the molded glass globes of the lights which were designed for Hermès in 1925 and feature the brand’s Greek meander pattern, as well as the store’s overall feel of a Haussmannian apartment, provide a contemporary translation of the timeless values of the house on the rue Faubourg Saint Honoré in Paris now transposed with the modern ambiance of Abu Dhabi.
Hermès, located on the second floor of Avenue, the luxury retail block of Etihad Towers, in the beachside Ras Al Akhdar district.
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