In SHANGHAI XINTIANDI where the past meets the present, if you are looking for a site that tells unforgettable stories, the map must be tagged with the fashion brand - ANEST COLLECTIVE. Neither a well-known boutique nor a street fashion brand, ANEST COLLECTIVE is a unique Italian luxury brand that offers high-quality ready-to-wear collections. Instead of following the bustling trend of fast-changing silhouette and color preferences, it remains low-key and focused on the aesthetic vision that is accumulated through life, and creates a narrative space through the fusion of the elements of clothing, artwork, furniture and architecture This is the place where people can enjoy the grace and freedom of aesthetics.
       Clothing is a mobile building. From the tinniest spinning structure to the display space of the store, ANEST COLLECTIVE presents the basic but not simple craftsmanship. Responsible for creating space, WATERFROM DESIGN extends the creative concept to the urban landscape based on the narrative background of the brand’s foundations - Italian aesthetics and workshops. The impressive buildings are strung together by large and small squares and stairs, the platform between which becomes the place to sit on, and ancient cultural cities are the destinations to visit; each stair presents three-dimensional details of the history.
       We transform the landscape vocabulary into the cross-sectional layout of the indoor building, not only deliberately highlighting the outline of the stairs, but also compressing or extending the cutting ratio of the stairs into commodity display cases and furniture cabinets, turning the dimension into a porch, the recessed facades of the wall and even the rhythmic level of the ceiling’s stair surface. The stairs and platforms that are placed or scaled down to reproduce the city’s ups and downs without the tedious details, and the sunny corners of the stairs help the interior create sculpture-like stereoscopic details. They connect like a kind of viewing rhythm, dislocation and extension, which makes people follow the turning of the stairs and unconsciously twist their perception of gravity, just like stepping into a psychedelic painting of MC Escher. Even if you look at the abruptly stopped ladder break-point, you also want to get a glimpse of the facade from another perspective.
       Light and Shadow Knead out the Wrinkles of Time At the same time, the shadows between the stairs faint deep or shallow images indoors. Through the shadows, you can perceive the height of the building and the power of the sculptures, stack the weight of the entity in the void and point out the direction of time when they rise and fall. This thought-provoking profoundness enriches the visual levels of different stairs’ cross-sectional and top views. The picture is still, and the years are tranquil, endowing the light with the outline of the story.
       In order to present the pure outline of the carved city, we choose white scales of different textures to stack the color layout, just like the painting White on White of the artist Malevich who wants to use pure geometry and monochromatic scales to describe the artistic origin of emotional detachment, but in this space, the thick or thin paint is represented in different textures of stone, lacquer and fabric. In the transitions of various thicknesses of white color, the light comes and goes like a lightly smeared pastel, soft and hazy. After the color is simplified and the shapes are retreated to the most tranquil state, the interior architecture is like an unglazed plain embryo, so that the viewers can thus focus on the aesthetic original intention brought by the sense of form and volume.
       To intone Italian urban architecture, one must embrace classicism. We learn from its decorative logic: sculptures, fireplaces, picture frames with sense of volumes, marble materials, etc. They are regarded as eternality by many generations, and shape the soul of life in space. We liberate the prosperous details with modern methods and have more freedom of imagination. The floating light and glimpse of the image left behind is a light-hearted dream, in which we do not remember the trivial details, but are impressed by the emotions we feel, as we turn the improvisational sketches of the Renaissance period that we reminisce into different scenes of the store, match the clothing, accessories and artwork according to each season to flexibly change the narrative intensity of the space .

Designer: Waterfrom Design
Client: ANEST Collective
Category: Boutique
Location: Shanghai
Area: 143 m2
Layout: 1F Display Area, storefront / 2F Showroom, living room, changing room, storage
Material：limestone, marble, hand paint, walnut solid wood, leather, brass, titanium plated metal
Design Period：2019.08 ~ 2019.10
Construction Period：2019.12 ~ 2020.05
Photographer：LU,FEN-FANG
Copyright: Waterfrom Design