Kiko Kostadinov Opens A Store Inside An Art Installation

News that Kiko Kostadinov recently opened his first flagship shop in Tokyo is straightforward enough. Any fan of Kostadinov men's or women's collections knows the surface is never as simple.

The Shibuya-based store concept mirrors Kiko Kostadinov's collections by offering two experiences for retail and gallery engagement. ‘The Salon’ are retail rooms designed by the designer Yusuke Seki. Here shoppers engage with Seki’s award-winning simplicity, soft brutalism and past lives inside interiors that accentuate Kostadinov clothing codes around practicality, period and elegance to unify what both makers tend to resolve: new reactions when the visual informs the physical, or vice versa.

The second part is trickier. An ephemeral interior called a ‘gallery-like initiative’ invites artists to devise concepts to interact with the Kostadinov customer experience. That American artist and filmmaker Ryan Trecartin is the first to shake up the Kiko world of Noland chevrons and art nouveau piping is spot on. Trecartin set design tends to redefine existing environments, or architecture, to challenge language, semantics and ideals. Think of a gut rehab for social ideologies to understand Trecartin’s work cleanly.

His prefab farm from the 2019 film ‘Whether Line’ shows where Kostadinov's reimagined retail mission could go. Active exchanges between resident artists, local artisans and customers inside environments with a retail component is a game-changer for the frontier as an arena towards active, challenging thinking. Shopping can wait.

Kiko Kostadinov opens 23 March at 2-32-3 Jingumae, Shibuya, Tokyo 150-000