A Bold Approach To Luxury Retail

After having re-designed the Toronto flagship of Canada’s only luxury department store, Holt Renfrew, in 2005, design duo Paul Filek and Diego Burdi of Burdifilek received another great commission by the same owners.

They were asked to revitalize another retail icon: Dublin’s menswear retail destination Brown Thomas.

Brown Thomas (and its BT2) and Holt Renfrew are both part of the Wittington Investment Group that also includes Selfridges in the UK.

In Dublin – as in the Holt Renfrew store of their home town of Toronto – Burdi and Filek took a bold approach to luxury retail by using both traditional luxury touches and completely new materials.

In the lower-concourse men’s department of Brown Thomas’s Grafton-Street flagship, Burdifilek created two environments: An old-world bespoke-inspired haven of luxury, and a bold, ocean-blue contemporary zone that says luxury in a more modern language.

A walnut wall sculpture, custom wool carpeting and chocolate-brown suede walls deck the more traditional bespoke section and its tailoring area. The art-gallery atmosphere of the blue fashion-forward zone sparkles and gleams in silver, blue and polished stainless steel.

Responding to the client’s desire to evoke a progressive sensibility to international luxury retailing, Burdifilek used exclusive custom furnishings, unexpected materials and bold statements.

Brown Thomas’s Grafton Street store has been a destination of demanding worldly consumers since 1849. It offers high-end designer fashion, accessory, cosmetics and home ware brands from around the world.

Diego Burdi is the design and creative lead of Burdifilek while Paul Filek is the dealmaker and managing partner. The two graduates of the Ryerson interior design program, together with their growing team of designers and specialists, occupy an 8,000-square-foot studio at Queen and Bathurst Streets in Toronto. - Tuija Seipell

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