An Intimate Sanctuary – Lonely Melrose by Knight Associates

A retail experience is often about creating a world within a world, a space that is sanctuary-like and emotive. For the Lonely Melrose store in West Hollywood, this was architects Knight Associates and Lara Hoad Architecture Design’s aspiration – creating an intimate and calming space that feels natural to the process of buying lingerie.

Located on Melrose Avenue, the store sits just a block back from Melrose Place in West Hollywood – a vibrant retail precinct filled with an abundance of classically designed buildings. The site was a blank canvas, an old industrial warehouse loft space with beautiful top lights and open rafters. The brief for the store was to reimagine the space to feel like a sanctuary, create layers of intimacy and instil a calming atmosphere for the process of trying on lingerie.

The brief for the store was to reimagine the space to feel like a sanctuary, create layers of intimacy and instil a calming atmosphere for the process of trying on lingerie.

One enters the store through a set of doors and is then met by an open area with a flagstone paved floor. Customers then move through a traditional retail space that focuses on display and transaction, before journeying towards the third space at the back of the store, which houses the changing rooms and a more private shopping experience. At the very rear of the store is the administration room, bathrooms and a small office.

The materiality explores a dialogue between hard and soft elements – creating intimacy and tactility with the customers and allowing the spaces to say something romantic with a modern vocabulary. To do this, natural materials like stone, plaster and timber were prioritised throughout. This material palette was influenced by the client’s experiences in the desert in South America as well as the tones and elements of the Los Angeles environment. Similarly, Knights Associates chose to work with joiners and artisans with expertise in materials local to the area. Furniture procured by the client, mainly sourced from vintage merchants along Melrose Place, beautifully complements the home due to its warm quality and evident signs of use.

This material palette was influenced by the client’s experiences in the desert in South America as well as the tones and elements of the Los Angeles environment.

The introduction of timber screens allows each section of the store to become separated when desired for a very intimate experience. The lighting design by LFA Lighting Design also supports the atmosphere of the space. The front of the building benefits from natural light, while the lighting at the rear is spotlighted and more discreet, with a few large skylights that continue to welcome scattered natural light into the space.

An ambitious and courageous leap into the American market, Lonely Melrose is a powerful example of a New Zealand brand with great design sensibilities and bold aspirations pushing boundaries in the design and retail space. It is a humbling project, which represents the joint ambition of two New Zealand-based companies with global aspirations to create a sanctuary-like space in the heart of West Hollywood.