arrival
It is not enough to see the "Yihe Jingui" on the coffee table of the hotel. When I opened the closet and found that the incense was also from Guan Xia, I guessed that this room was carefully arranged.
This boutique hotel on Wukang Road has been converted from an old bungalow with white marble, brass materials and Western furniture, as well as wooden windows, floors and shutters. The process of "using" the room is also the process of discovering the products of the summer: the scented candles on the bathtub, the bath fragrance in the shower, the hand sanitizer and hand cream on the washstand...
At that time, I sighed that the original category of Guanxia was already so rich, although the actual situation was far more than that.
I have always believed that whether it appears as a necessity of life or not, a good, high-end brand must be able to evoke the perception and love of daily life. But it is not an easy task to let the product and culture skillfully "immerse" the life scene, because it is not the output of the concept first, but the product capability.
Back in early 2020 (we all know what a special period it was), I just started to make selections for the store, and my colleagues recommended "a very tonal Chinese brand" to me, and stressed that they did not rely on traffic, did not go live, and have been focusing on the "content exploration" in the fields of oriental culture, art and aroma.
Obviously, at that time, I didn't know what kind of exploration was called "content exploration", but following the recommendation of my colleagues, what I saw was that the fragrance on the shelves of the Mini Program was too popular and sold out, but it was far from the next replenishment.
Later, I don't know what kind of efforts it took, in short, the Guanxia team not only overcame the production capacity problem caused by the epidemic in just two years, but also had a beautiful, solid, and more abundant product line.
Solid is the quality that I pay the most attention to whenever any category of products emerges in the field of "new consumption" - as we all know, in the era of traffic spawned by social networks, it is simpler for a brand to do data than quality.
It sounds like a contrarian word, and behind the solid is the firm determination of the core value of the brand, it is self-confidence, and it is "not in a hurry".
Because I was "not in a hurry", I was able to pay attention to their every step, and even proudly recommended it as a model for a new Chinese brand.
The reason why a brand like Guanxia is unique and important is that it finds inspiration, breath, story, and incense from the treasures of oriental culture, and completes the top-down penetration at the brand level; it cooperates with international perfumers to have a complete product every time it is new, especially the moving stories behind the fragrance; it must be mentioned that there is also a brand team led by media editors, and even the first issue of their magazine "Kunlun", which is obviously part of their "content exploration".
Because of "no hurry", after the first store in Sanlitun in Beijing, it was not until the beginning of this year that Guanxia opened its first flagship store in Shanghai.
The location is very close to the hotel where I am staying, just at the junction of Wukang Road and Hunan Road.
No need to rush to get there, there is no public transport there anyway. Walking under the plane trees, no matter how fast or slow, takes only five or six minutes to walk to a neo-Hispanic building.
That is the "Idle Garden", a new store in Guanxia that grows out of the quiet and slow growth of Hunan Road.
Watch the summer
Restoration and rebirth
Not only plums, camellias, chicken claw maples, wisteria and osmanthus trees, but for a long time, the plants in the garden were the most experienced residents here.
They bear witness to how the old building was restored to its present form: Guan Xia spent a lot of effort to find a team of Shanghai's landmarks such as the Wukang Building and the Blackstone Apartment, who had 20 or 30 years of experience and were not rebuilding the house, but carefully "repairing the old as old" on the basis of the original building.
The twisting rope patterns inside and outside the building, the green tin windows, and the Romeo balconies are all iconic elements of the "New Hispanic style" that have ultimately been restored and preserved.
Plants were also preserved and transplanted, while new neighbors such as irises and wood thieves were welcomed. In this way, the garden is full of life all year round. The designers even reserved more than twenty test tubes in the garden, choosing different flower materials according to the seasonal changes, so the whole courtyard will become an unfolding flower vessel.
Bamboo fences have been re-erected on the gray walls around the garden, restoring the traditional style of the French Concession in Shanghai, and a whole mirror has been installed on one of the walls, a very contemporary design that allows an oriental garden to extend infinitely, and is also a concentrated display of the "Oriental New Modernity" of Guanxia.
Anyway, this is my favorite place in the whole "idle court". While the real entrance is just as important, I'd rather start my journey here and say hello to the plants first.
The fragrance of the plants also extends to the main booth across the door, where Guan Xia's most proud works are displayed - the essence of the Orient, the full range of oriental philosophical perfumes, and the smelling device that can smell all the indoor fragrances.
I don't know if it is because of Shanghai, there is an incense that has attracted my attention in particular: Fukaisen Road.
One year, when the presiding officer S was walking on Wukang Road in early spring, the magnolia flowers blooming on both sides of the road emitted a faint fragrance, and the sun sprinkled on the street, and this memory was preserved along with the aroma. Later, it became the representative aroma of the early Guanxia and four seasons aromatherapy series "Fukaisen Road", which is the old name of Wukang Road. Shanghai has also become a continuous source of inspiration for Guanxia to create incense.
In the courtyard of the idle garden, Guan Xia transplanted a magnolia tree representing Fu KaiSen Road Guan Xia
Compared to Beijing, the Shanghai flagship store is said to have the most comprehensive variety: it houses products including bathing series.
All of the display islands in the space are made of travertine – evolved from sedimentary rocks on the seabed, and the surface of these rocks has a naturally formed smooth curve that is a trace of time accumulated over millions of years.
The overall atmosphere of the leisure court presents a warm, clear and concise atmosphere, thanks to the designer's restraint in the "design language": the superfluous decoration is hidden, and the viewer can clearly and quickly obtain information.
But every seemingly simple corner is full of emotions and details.
The original fireplaces on the first and second floors have been preserved, and the firewood has been replaced by a pile of incense candles. When the open flame became a memory, this calm fireplace became one of my favorite corners.
If you are a long-time user of summer viewing, you will know that the core of these candles is made of cherry wood, which replaces the usual cotton thread. When the candle is lit, the wooden core will sound the sound of firewood burning: crackling.
At this time, the sound of the fire is still in your ears, and you can feel the freehand and romance that belongs to Guan Xia.
If you pay more attention, you will find that the doors of the entire space are mainly arches.
At the time of restoration, the curve and curvature of the arch were also preserved, and the craftsmen removed the old door frame and threw the plaster line back into the hand.
The arch is surrounded by raised twists and turns, which are also representative elements of Spanish architecture, so the twists and turns in the building have been preserved, and it can be said that all subsequent modern expressions of the designer are based on the original style of the building.
Walking through the arches decorated with twisted rope patterns, you will find another mystery, that is, the entire space has adopted the technique of "borrowing scenery". This means that in any one space, you can see the "view" of another.
The romance of the Chinese garden appears in every look back and movement of the guests, running through such a Spanish-style building.
useless
More and more people are visiting, stepping on the soft carpet, leaving the openness and fragrance of the first floor for a while, and going down the stairs that are also proud of the craftsmen – retaining the ancient style, the corners closing in the form of gold dollars – to the second floor.
It's closer to the core of the "idle court".
Guanxia's definition of idle court is a place where you can idle and don't have to do anything efficient. More than once I've heard people on the Guanxia team say that they want to tell their users that not everything has to be "useful" and that doing useless things doesn't mean wasting time.
On the second floor, you don't even have to think about buying any products, and the things that can be called "useful" here include:
Hand-print a New Year painting.
Guan xia drew inspiration from the oriental family customs, invited Ren Helin Renlao, the non-hereditary inheritor of kaifeng woodblock new year paintings, to translate the poem "There is a tiger in the heart, smell the roses" from the oriental perspective, corresponding to the wisdom of yin and yang carvings of the engraving process, implemented to the workshop on the second floor, that is, the master's engraving plate was coated with golden paint, and a Guanxia New Year painting was personally printed with red paper.
Learn to make a Chinese fruit.
The kit has been opened and placed on the table with plates and bean paste of various colors, and all I need to do is listen to the pastry chef and make a peach blossom-shaped fruit with my hands (for the first time in my life). The whole process lasted for more than ten minutes, and everything was smooth, but in the last step, I encountered trouble: when I decorated the petals with gold leaf, a large amount of gold leaf was poured on my hand, and I could not wipe it off. The master said, "Then I want to congratulate you, because you have a gold-sucking physique." ”
Or sit on the couch and open a picture book, a magazine, or look out the window in a daze.
Guanxia's own magazine, Kunlun, is placed in the most prominent position, and the brand positions it as a mobile art gallery.
The magazine is not sold to the public, but is a completely non-profit experimental attempt, documenting the team's exploration and thinking about oriental culture and art in addition to watching the summer, but few people can open it.
As I've discussed, this magazine is an excellent example of a cultural narrative for Chinese consumer brands: 90% of the members of Guanxia's main creative team come from Fashion Magazine and 4A Creative Company in New York, and the development of this magazine and even its products shows the important impact of magazine thinking in products.
Precisely because it is a non-profit project, Guan Xia also regards Kunlun as a carrier of "useless beauty". This "uselessness" is reflected in magazines, in the time it takes to make the fruit, and even in the window that runs down the street: artists perform performances in the window, where they focus on "useless" things and don't care about passers-by.
After that, the second-floor space will continue to hold book fairs, tea parties, illustration and other workshops, these activities provide "skills" that are not needed in life, and even can not bring the most direct transformation to the offline retail of Guanxia, but this is the most critical -
As Guanxia's first flagship store in Shanghai, whether Xianting can be called a successful work depends on whether it presents Guanxia's concept and especially brand aesthetics to the greatest extent.
The Pavilion is a composite space that combines retail, display, aesthetics and cultural education, as well as a commercial entity that is (and will be) constantly visited by customers, and it can offer not only products, but also the stories that brands tell through everything around them.
This story includes "uselessness". In addition to the "useless things" all over the garden, you can also find the answer in Guanxia's core product, fragrance. Incense, originally an expression of spiritual attributes, goes hand in hand with art, literature and music, showing the useless beauty of daily life.
Looking back, it is precisely those useless things that have made Guanxia's brand, and also made me believe that a better brand is to inspire our love of life.
The story also includes "restraint." If you open the first official account of Guan Xia, you will find that there is a saying that the best works are created by time and are only given to patient people.
Restraint means believing in time. So after Guanxia opened its first physical store in Beijing, it took a year to open a second store in Shanghai. Before encountering the building at 111 Hunan Road, Guan Xia spent a year searching for it. In the process of preparing the Shanghai store, it took half a year to repair and strengthen.
What is truly precious may not be exchanged for human or financial resources, and it takes time to precipitate the answer. It is not that in a short period of time, you have a product, open a store, go live, and sell goods, you have a brand, as Guan Xia himself firmly believes:
Good brands grow naturally.
reality
There is also a truth that can be overlooked.
When sharing the above information with you, "restoration" or "restoration" is always used repeatedly, and in fact this discovery answers the question that has plagued me all the way: How did Guanxia, which was born in Beijing, bring oriental aesthetics to Shanghai?
Guanxia's shops do not have any obvious and popular trends, but restore and preserve the foundation of the building itself. In the process of "repairing the old as old", designers and craftsmen did not disturb and destroy the structure of the building, but even highlighted the original beauty of the building, which means that Guanxia does not need to bring "what beauty" to Shanghai, because the beauty here is what is happening and growing.
Comparison before and after the renovation of the leisure garden Watching the summer
For any brand that is about to "enter" the next city, rather than creating another "Paris", another "New York", and another "Seoul", the offline space should respect the core values of the brand itself, respect the locality, and excavate and stimulate the history of the city.
We are accustomed to brand expansion under the influence of Internet thinking, but we are unwilling to admit that the efficiency of such expansion depends on capital rather than the cultural attributes of the brand itself, and the latter's empowerment cannot be quantified.
In contrast, solid and accurate is the brand methodology that I agree with more. Because it is not to "occupy" the market with quantity, but to "lead" users with quality.
It has entered 2022, and even in more and more "influencer fierce battle zones", it is not necessary to make a traffic-oriented internet celebrity shop in order to cater to it. Guanxia has set an example: it has completed the iterative experiment of the physical space of this neighborhood in a place such as Wukang Road, the originator of the internet celebrity street, and it has at least proved that a brand that is not plunged into traffic and efficiency can also be decent and promising.
Imagine walking from a world of rolls to edgelessness, and in this space of about 300 square meters, from a stone that has existed for millions of years to a can of incense candles that can burn for up to 20 hours, you are trying to tell you: Don't worry, we have time.
I guess there's a good chance you'll fall in love here.
Coinciding with the pandemic era, such a seemingly useless physical space that is likely to leave you with nothing to do may not be able to inspire our redemption and hope for reality, but it can use smell, vision and touch to shape our already dull and beautiful perception of daily life.