KISS

I’ve often challenged retailers to get more emotional, more intuitive, more imaginative and aspire to a vision of the store I call a Theater of Dreams. During New York Fashion Week in September, I got to see that vision made real by the talented designer Mary Ping. In case you think I spent my time rushing around NY Fashion Week shows, Mary’s exhibition was held in our own Saatchi & Saatchi offices on Hudson Street. And very fitting it was too given that Mary’s company name is Slow & Steady Wins the Race. Yes, S&SWTR was an added bonus – if anyone who saw the show thought we were part of the creative brilliance, well, luck is where you find it!

For the New York show Mary worked with a local architectural firm, Bureau V, to present an installation they called Perfume Counter / Department Store / Wedding Dress. Bureau V also had its own exhibition of current projects in our space at the same time.

The installation was a mix of museum, store and entertainment center, exactly what I believe fantastic retail needs to be. Everything was priced at Ping’s signature price of $100 – and that means sunglasses, shirts and even, incredibly, the wedding dress. But Mary Ping is never stuck on formulas. I see she also has a three-tiered Luxe collection with prices stepping up from $1,000 to $10,000 to, yes, $100,000 for a Russian sable trench coat.

Mary Ping is a testament to the power of simplicity and ideas. Simply stunning.

Check out the SlowAndSteadyWinsTheRace website here.