Paul Vanstone Heads at Folk

I've liked menswear from Folk for a while now (Hickory's Hard Goods tempts me more than is fair) but I've never visited one of their stores; a recent reference to their new Munich shop on Remodelista made me curious enough to look for images. I have to say, I think they have one of the most sophisticated retail interiors I've seen in a long time.



Displays are tied in place, hung from the ceiling and tethered to the floor; even the light fixtures have this seemingly temporary appearance, as of a camp site or, more accurately, construction zone. Shelves lean into the walls and rest on points that resemble the legs of surveyor's tripods, and racks are constructed from fittings that could easily be disassembled in an afternoon:



This aesthetic continues into the display supports, which look like scaffolding, or construction supports rendered in wood:



Walls are covered in a patchwork of reclaimed timber, recalling the fences created from debris that used to surround demolition and construction areas:



I love how the leg of the rack in the above image rests on the lower stair, as it shows how completely this scheme works in and around the existing architecture of the space.

And amongst all this transience, the quiet, seemingly eternal countenance of Paul Vanstone heads, sculpted in lusciously veined marbles.



They have a certain gravitas in contrast to the looseness of their surrounding -- everything else looking as though it could fly apart into some Julie Mehretu abyss --



But the heads stand on, used like spolia sourced from a past age of greater permanence than our own. They become human, touchable, by the casualness in which they are used, like a matchbook tucked under the leg of a wobbly table:



I wrote to the folks at Folk and was told that Vanstone is friends with their creative director, and that they work together to select the sculptures for each of the stores. This makes sense, as I find a certain completeness comes through in the way the heads are used, and how they interact with the spaces -- not as centerpieces, or objects in space, but as part of the whole.