What’s Happening: After a two-year renovation, Dior is reopening its historic 30 Montaigne flagship in Paris. Featuring a museum, restaurant, hotel suite, and salon, the project is a big bet on fully immersive brand experience as luxury brands attempt to widen their scope beyond fashion into the realms of culture, art, and hospitality.

The Download: In 1946, Christian Dior founded his maison in a stately Parisian hôtel particulier at 30 Avenue Montaigne that eventually became the French label’s top-selling flagship. It closed in 2019 for a sweeping makeover, which entailed the LVMH-backed maison acquiring six contiguous historic buildings and combining them into a 108,000-square-foot emporium offering a wholly integrated Dior universe designed by luxury retail’s go-to interior architect Peter Marino.

Besides offering womenswear, menswear, accessories, homewares, jewelry, and beauty products imbued with Dior’s savoir faire, the flagship is replete with fanciful details like a luminous sculpture by Paul Cocksedge, suspended in an airy atrium, that mimics Christian Dior’s sketches falling from his desk. An adjoining museum recites the label’s history through the lens of its esteemed creative directors such as Yves Saint Laurent and John Galliano, while the on-site restaurant is helmed by French culinary breakout star Jean Imbert. There’s even a standalone hotel room that allows guests the chance to keep the store open all night for exclusive 24/7 access.

LVMH continues to make ambitious forays into experiential retail, which they see as a key strategy for brick-and-mortar businesses to circumvent an evolving retail landscape that’s increasingly pivoting to e-commerce. Expanding its luxury travel portfolio has been a focus, from the expansion of Bulgari-branded properties to Fendi’s pop-up cafes to the acquisition of high-end hotel group Belmond.

The conglomerate also recently bankrolled the long-awaited refurbishment of storied Parisian department store La Samaritaine (pictured), an all-in-one shopping destination that stocks such luxury brands as Fendi, Balenciaga, and Givenchy and offers five-star accommodations at the Cheval Blanc hotel, also designed by Marino. The success of La Samaritaine remains to be seen, and LVMH executives are notoriously tight-lipped about sales numbers; at the ribbon-cutting, a publicist stated that “we don’t want to talk of figures—that would spoil the dream.” Still, HSBC estimates that Dior’s revenue has tripled from $2.4 billion to $7.2 billion since CEO Pietro Beccari took the reins in early 2018.

In Their Own Words: “We wanted to build a kind of Luna Park of the senses,” Beccari tells Business of Fashion. “Someone coming here, if they loved Dior they will love it even more. If they didn’t, they’ll be convinced about the value of this brand.”

Surface Says: LVMH brand sales have boomed during the pandemic, but the wisdom of its all-encompassing strategy for in-person experiences is still a bold bet on consumer behavior and brand loyalty. Do people want all LVMH all the time? We’re about to find out.

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As we look toward the year ahead, Surface is teaming up with The Macallan to toast unparalleled creativity, new beginnings, and a dedication to mastery of craft, a pursuit that has shaped the storied history of The Macallan since 1824. Crafted without compromise. Please savor The Macallan responsibly.

Whether it be his furry magenta furniture line or the monochromatic interiors projects that juxtapose neutral backdrops with shiny royal blue features, the Wonderful World of Harry Nuriev is a place teeming with vibrant colors and textures that will make you smile. Here, we ask the founder of Crosby Studios and one of the design world’s most inventive minds to reflect on another year of transformation as the pandemic continues to upend conventional notions about the way we work and create.

Name: The Boca Raton

Location: South Florida

Designers: Rockwell Group, visual identity by King & Partners

On Offer: Originally designed by architect Addison Mizner—often credited with establishing the style of South Florida’s mansions and villas with arched windows, spiraling marble columns, and flowing indoor-outdoor floor plans—the Boca Raton is ready for another run thanks to a $200-million makeover by Rockwell Group. On 200 waterfront acres, the aging relic has been reimagined into a sprawling complex encompassing five hotels, two golf courses, four Major Food Group restaurants, and a massive Alhambra-inspired spa by Colin Cowie.

Standout Features: “We wanted to provide a fresh point of view while also animating the hotel’s original vision by Addison Mizner nearly 100 years later,” says Shawn Sullivan, partner and studio leader at Rockwell Group. “Each space has its own essence, but subtle, connecting threads tie back to Mizner’s Mediterranean Revival design style.” The firm’s approach is on display at the cluster of Major Food Group restaurants. The white-tablecloth Flamingo Grill flaunts flora-and-fauna motifs, a Murano glass chandelier, and hand-painted tile mural of the chophouse’s namesake bird. The theatrical setting is the backdrop for a decadent menu of prime rib with au jus, dijon mustard, and horseradish cream, and banana splits flambéed tableside by servers wearing pink jackets.

The winners for Toronto’s annual Winter Stations—a design competition that transforms beach lifeguard stations into temporary structures during the winter— have been unveiled. Ranging from abstract to practical, the three winning designs were inspired by the theme of resilience. “Over the course of the last year and a half, we have so clearly witnessed the immense ability of people to withstand and push through challenging and unprecedented times,” said the organizers. “In recognition and celebration of this courage, the theme chosen for the 2022 edition is Resilience: the ability to withstand adversity and recover from difficulties.”

Our weekly roundup of the internet’s most preposterous headlines, from the outrageous to the outright bizarre.

There’s A Petition to Launch a Vulva-Shaped Spaceship Because Why Not? [Huffington Post]

McDonald’s Defaced Impressionist Paintings to Elevate Itself to a Classic [Adweek]

Donald Trump Says Global Warming Is Good Because It Means More “Seafront Property” [Futurism]

Broken “Country Bears” Movie Animatronic Reminded Elton John of When He Did “Too Much Coke” [PopCrush]

Early Humans Kept Getting Their Heads Knocked In [ArsTechnica]

When: Until March 26

Where: Head Hi, Brooklyn

What: It’s become an annual tradition for Head Hi, a hybrid bookshop, espresso bar, and creative space near the Brooklyn Navy Yard, to invite a global roster of artists and designers to whip up experimental lamps for a group show that celebrates everything about light. For the third edition, more than 50 participants are offering up personality-packed fixtures, from a elephant-shaped aluminum table lamp by Lambert et Fils to a lightbulb affixed to a plastic blender by Franc Palaia. Visitors can nominate their favorite lamp of the bunch, with the winning designer receiving a stay at the newly opened Ace Hotel Brooklyn.

Isabelle Brourman is a mixed-media artist and designer. Brourman builds poetic dialogues between personal narrative and the collective unconscious through a complex system of painting, illustration, beading, stitching, and/or collage. Drawing on her own experience, observations, and the imagination, Brourman uses a range of materials as a way of merging details of everyday life with the glowing idealism of the divine. The work is effusive: inspired by conversations, dreams, discarded objects, wishes, strangers, lovers, and trauma.

Love Face is composed of hidden faces and their interrelated narratives. Compositionally, the painting references the suspense of the stage, playing with the tensions and tricks of its containment. Love Face hosts characters, some in plain sight and some hidden in larger patterns of abstraction. Brourman hopes to convey the complicated romance that is being alive through color, melody, and material.

Love Face will be on view in “Woman Made” at Surface Area in the Miami Design District starting March 8.

When full-fledged war broke out in Ukraine last week as Russian troops stormed the country, outpourings of solidarity with Ukraine circulated on social media. Many people admitted to feeling helpless in how to assist relief efforts for a country whose cities are being bombed and cultural artifacts destroyed, with hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing in a matter of days. The creative community quickly stepped in. On Instagram, designers such as Alex Proba, Germans Ermics, Sabine Marcelis, Eny Lee Parker, and Karl Monies began auctioning some of their latest works and donating proceeds to charity.

Reach the design world every morning. Find out more about advertising in the Design Dispatch.

Dara Schaefer is the founder of Wonderground Studios located in both New York City and the Hudson Valley. She attended the art and architecture schools at The Cooper Union and has been working in clay for more than a decade. She uses traditional clay and digital technologies to realize each collection, including Grasshopper, a visual programming language where she employs mathematical algorithms to alter surface textures.

Dara Schaefer will be participating in “Woman Made” at Surface Area in the Miami Design District starting March 8.

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