Infectiously Cool – Deiji Studios Flagship by Pattern Studio

The new Deiji Studios Flagship store in Byron Bay’s Jonson Lane precinct is a seamless extension of the label. Designed by local firm Pattern Studio in collaboration with Deiji Directors Emma Nelson and Juliette Harkness, the boutique gently eschews typical retail conventions, making way for an experience that asks visitors to adopt the same slowness and ease as the label’s luxurious loungewear, sleepwear and linen.

The design – with its airy neutrals and unfussy combinations – is immediately calming and entirely fitting for the label’s deliberate and endearing simplicity. Yet Pattern Studio’s vision for the store ran deeper than Deiji’s enduring ethos, with designers Josh Cain and Lily Goodwin looking further afield to Isamu Noguchi and Richard Serra’s sculptures and, more broadly, Deiji’s affinity for contemporary East Asian design culture for inspiration. Most influential however, were the words of 17th-century Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō, who wrote ‘there is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon’.

The design – with its airy neutrals and unfussy combinations – is immediately calming and entirely fitting for the label’s deliberate and endearing simplicity.

The abstract undertone of this verse is reflected in many ways in the design of the store’s layout, which, in plan, follows a gently winding path from front to back, guided by various structures – both fixed and loose – and sightlines. The display window is loosely delineated from the store by a sheer drop of fabric; a bespoke table by Melbourne-based furniture maker Annie Paxton anchors the arrival sequence, surrounded by little else; two changing rooms clad in sand-blasted glass blocks sit like diaphanous vestibules at seemingly random locations; and the counter – a geometric oak unit by local maker Kye Darcy – creates a feeling of domesticity in lieu of a sales-forward experience.

Sequentially considered, these various architectural elements guide the experience of this lightly layered space alongside other gestures. There’s the off-white concrete floor with smatterings of natural stone; the steel hanging rods tracing fine lines across the store’s white walls; the oversized faceted mirror; and heavy fabric curtains enclosing the changing rooms. Combined, these elements contribute to the evocative yet easy atmosphere so closely associated with the label’s garments and textiles. Finally, the ceiling structure – an exposed, aluminium grid stretching from front to back – disrupts Deiji’s signature repose with a raw, utilitarian feel.

Indeed, it’s no new thing to interpret a label’s ethos through a bricks-and-mortar offering, yet it’s no less pleasing when done well. Here, Pattern Studio has captured Deiji’s infectiously cool spirit and easy energy, offering it with delightful potency upon each visit.