For many people, a perk of the holidays is copious amounts of champagne. Playing into the season's festive drinking spirit is Moët & Chandon’s SoHo pop-up, Boutique Moët—a store where consumers can have a bottle of the brand's champagne personalized with Swarovski crystals. Tied to the French champagne house's "Be Fabulous" campaign and inspired by the limited edition of the gold Swarovski-crystal-encrusted White Star bottles, the pop-up will be in operation for most of December; it opened on Saturday, December 1, and will run on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through December 30.
Located on West Broadway, the small, dark space resembles a mini club (similar to Moët's lounges at Fashion Week), with black walls and carpeting accented with gold details. Consumers can bring a pre-purchased bottle of Moët here (the boutique itself doesn't sell any champagne) and have it customized it with a message (up to seven characters for $30). The bottles can then be picked up within two days, or can be delivered anywhere in Manhattan by messenger.To create an environment for this concept, Moët & Chandon's marketing director for the Northeast region, Whitley Bouma Herbert, charged R&D Culture with creating a space that utilized architecture, animation, and brand-specific concepts. R&D hired Tronic Studio to carry out the design.
“We wanted to speak to the sophistication and style of Moët,” explained Tronic's art director and cofounder, Vivian Rosenthal. “Their simple colors, black and gold, encapsulate the brand, and we used them to capture what it feels like inside one of the bottles, on an abstract level. Walls echo the shape of bubbles, as do the projections, to create an organic, liquid experience that feels slightly mysterious.”
Mystery is exactly what they got. Whereas traditional retail spaces are easy to find and flooded with light, the Moët store is tucked away like a speakeasy. At first the store was labeled only with graphic signage that featured the logo exploding with bubbles, but confusion on the street forced the design team to return to the traditional logo and fill the other blackened windows with similar Moët signage.
Located on West Broadway, the small, dark space resembles a mini club (similar to Moët's lounges at Fashion Week), with black walls and carpeting accented with gold details. Consumers can bring a pre-purchased bottle of Moët here (the boutique itself doesn't sell any champagne) and have it customized it with a message (up to seven characters for $30). The bottles can then be picked up within two days, or can be delivered anywhere in Manhattan by messenger.To create an environment for this concept, Moët & Chandon's marketing director for the Northeast region, Whitley Bouma Herbert, charged R&D Culture with creating a space that utilized architecture, animation, and brand-specific concepts. R&D hired Tronic Studio to carry out the design.
“We wanted to speak to the sophistication and style of Moët,” explained Tronic's art director and cofounder, Vivian Rosenthal. “Their simple colors, black and gold, encapsulate the brand, and we used them to capture what it feels like inside one of the bottles, on an abstract level. Walls echo the shape of bubbles, as do the projections, to create an organic, liquid experience that feels slightly mysterious.”
Mystery is exactly what they got. Whereas traditional retail spaces are easy to find and flooded with light, the Moët store is tucked away like a speakeasy. At first the store was labeled only with graphic signage that featured the logo exploding with bubbles, but confusion on the street forced the design team to return to the traditional logo and fill the other blackened windows with similar Moët signage.
The dark look of Boutique Moët.
Photo: Alison Whittington for BizBash
Using the champagne house's black and gold colors, Tronic Studio designed an environment that played up bubbles.
Photo: Alison Whittington for BizBash
Round cutouts in the wall acted as display cases.
Photo: Alison Whittington for BizBash
At the rear of the boutique, custom bottles helped consumers see the personalization.
Photo: Alison Whittington for BizBash
