17.02.07
SELFRIDGES TAKES A SURREAL
TURN THIS SPRING
From 16th March to 24th June, Selfridges will explore the influence of Surrealism
on contemporary art and design with a series of collaborations in its Oxford
Street store. Running in tandem with the Victoria and Albert museum’s
exhibition, Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design (29th March to 22nd July),
Selfridges’ commissions will demonstrate the powerful effect the movement
continues to have on artists and designers today.
Selfridges has always been much more than just a shop, operating at many levels of experience, from extraordinary window displays to perception-challenging in-store activities. Surrealism at Selfridges will encompass all of this to offer visitors the most captivating shopping experience ever staged in a department store.
Surreal windows
At the height of the surrealist movement in the 1930s, artists such as Salvador Dali and Elsa Schiaparelli would create window displays for forward-thinking shops. Selfridges will celebrate this tradition by inviting current Surrealism-friendly designers to create unique and thought-provoking schemes.
Commissioned designers include John Galliano, Viktor & Rolf, Maison Martin Margiela, and Moschino. Each of them has been given free rein to create a surrealist world within one window, reflecting the essence of their creativity and the influence of Surrealism on their work.
Swiss minimalist designer Rolf Sachs, and Dadadandy – the Paris-based team inspired by Surrealism and Dadaism - will each create a window and other projects inside the store.
Dadadandy will give Selfridges’ Surrealism season one of its most startling art pieces: a gigantic eyeball dangling over the store’s iconic Lady of Time above the historic main entrance.
Rolf Sachs has created a range of surrealist products which will be sold exclusively by Selfridges in its surreal bespoke shop-in-shop (see below).
Within the store, Surrealism continues:
This is not a shop – a collaboration with F.A.T.
Selfridges has invited hot young architectural practice Fashion Architecture Taste (F.A.T.) to design and curate a surreal shop on the lower ground floor of the Oxford Street Store.
This guerilla shop will display and sell an amazing and wide-ranging array of items, all reflecting the ongoing influence of the surreal aesthetic on contemporary art and design.
Products range from the Dali inspired mirror-nails produced by O.P.I Nail Bar for Selfridges, to the oversized stationery by wacky design brand XL, to extraordinary exclusive and dreamy book sculptures by Su Blackwell, to wonderfully sinful and unbelievable confections by ChoccyWoccyDoodah – the most creative chocolatier and patissier this side of the moon.
The shop will also sell exclusive surreal-like lighting pieces through Greenwich Village, Selfridges’ contemporary designer furniture space.
Selfridges is delighted to be the exclusive retailer of a large selection of the V&A surreal products which will also be sold through the Selfridges Surreal Shop.
Surreal tea shop – a collaboration with Les Trois Garçons
Next to the Surreal Shop, on the lower ground floor of the Oxford Street store, Sienna Café will also get the surreal treatment, courtesy of culinary threesome extraordinaire Les Trois Garçons. After its reinvention by this highly creative team, Sienna Café will look, feel and taste different – selling Surrealism inspired cakes and nibbles.
Dadadandy does Surrealism at Selfridges
As a part of the store’s exploration of contemporary Surrealism, Selfridges has commissioned a surrealist art installation to occupy the Ultralounge, the Oxford Street store’s events space - also on the lower ground floor.
Created by Dadadandy, the installation will suggest a challenging modern take on an original surrealist concept.
Dadadandy will also provide customers with an original sign off: a poetry-filled till receipt which people will be able to keep, read, share long
after the surreal moment is over.