Located in the heart of Wellington city's premier fashion quarter, Stolen Girlfriends Club's new flagship store challenges the conventions of retail design with an 'anti-retail' stance that reflects the brand's rebellious, rock and roll spirit. Resembling a blacked-out club, the new store hides in plain sight.

Providing a sense of mystique and intrigue from the street, slot apertures cut into a 20m-long, 1m-deep, blackened wall, providing minimal glimpses into the store interior, making seasonal store renewal and replenishment a curatorial act. Store access is purposefully slowed down, and anticipation conversely ramps up as visitors traverse a 20m-long walkway to enter a dramatic, amorphous silver-lined space.

Described by Stolen Girlfriends Club Creative Director and Co-Founder Marc Moore as an “inverted disco ball, purposefully pumping with light in the centre to draw in customers,” from the interior, the perimeter wall ripples with textural silver foil to generate a white noise and visual static stage that heightens the presence of products on display.

The bespoke display design features knife-like shelves of stainless steel that slice into the walls like the blades of a Stanley knife, while a sinuous ceiling-mounted garment rail arcs through the space, transforming garments into artworks in their own right. Jewellery also takes centre stage, with an intimate salon located behind the store’s laneway window, inviting customers to sit in comfort to try on the bespoke pieces.

A visit to the store’s fitting rooms reveals the final gesture in the gradual unveiling of the design story, which Tsujimoto describes as like a “secret song at the end of an album”. Ample spaces, lined in a bubble-gum pink, provide a visceral counterpoint to the glittering, spaceship-like black and silver interior, designed for a memorable and luxurious fitting experience.