Gorman

We worked with Gorman for close to a decade, starting in 2008, and designed around 25 spaces for them along the way: shops in shopping centres and on high streets, concessions inside department stores, pop-ups, and one shipping container.

The brief stayed remarkably steady the whole time. Gorman wanted stores that felt natural, colourful and a little bit vintage. They needed a clear identity, but they weren’t meant to be flashy or to push people to buy, buy, buy. The store’s job was to be a considered backdrop for the clothes.

That brief suited us. It meant warm, honest materials, recycled wherever we could manage it. Our Chapel Street store, shortlisted at the 2008 IDEA Awards, was built that way. It meant colour used with confidence but not shouting, and details that wear in rather than date. It also meant no two stores were quite the same. A Victorian arcade in Sydney asks for something different from a big suburban centre or a busy city street, so each store responded to where it was while still feeling unmistakably Gorman.

A selection of the stores:

Gorman Doncaster
Gorman Chapel Street
Gorman The Strand Arcade
Gorman Auckland
Gorman Macquarie
Gorman Swanston Walk
Gorman Westfield Carindale
Gorman Ship Shop