Younger, the fashion brand known for investing in everything, is back in real estate after a brief return to the fashion industry. This time, the brand has launched a rather ambitious project: building China's first sustainable lifestyle retail space on Shanghai's iconic Middle Huaihai Road. Currently called HAI550 because of its location at 550 Middle Huaihai Road, the site was a theater in the 1930s and a cinema in the 1950s, before becoming the world's first Barbie flagship store in 2009.
The space spans eight floors and more than 7,000 square meters. There are no retail spaces on the ground floor, which is reserved for content creation and campaigns, including pop-up shops and exhibitions. On opening day, the first floor hosted two activations: a Patagonia workshop and a mechanical art installation called “Realities Printer.”
Image: HAI550
The upper floors are now home to a host of young, creative brands with a sustainable ethos – from shoes made from recycled plastic bottles to a “Top Up” shop that sells products without any packaging. Younger also runs its own space in the building, Younger Lab: a gallery-like, off-white space that serves as the Younger shop, but with clothes displayed in museum-art style.
The building itself utilises sustainable materials recycled from post-industrial waste such as surplus wood and bricks. HAI550 is Younger's exploration of retail space with a design-led layout that also seeks to bring the “fun” back into shopping. Interestingly, the building has only a few food and beverage outlets, a rarity in today's retail landscape. The escalators are also uphill only to conserve energy. The Chinese city's downtown has been struggling with the closure of many stores and restaurants on Zhonghuaihai Road over the past few years, but the new space can be seen as an exploration into experiential retail to bring back foot traffic.
