Being inside a shop full of mirrors, constantly confronted by your own reflection, may not sound all that appealing; but this is the result of a completely new approach to luxury retail environments conceived by Belgian designer Raf Simons, who for the first time has been given completely creative control to design the new flagship Jil Sander store in downtown New York. You enter this 6,300 square foot space and are confronted not by rails but by a ground floor presentation space which has the capability to display an entire season's collection. This then leads to a mirrored staircase made out of turning mirror panels, and on the second floor you're introduced to the apparel and accessories in a much more intimate setting. 

"I wanted to look for an alternative, a kind of passage to shopping," says Simons. "This space will offer the chance to experience the collection, the house and the atmosphere of the brand on a level between a fashion show and shopping itself. The ground floor is a different kind of store window for me, a more private one, a much more personal moment than standing on the street."

Simons invited the Dutch artist Germaine Kruip to create a point of distraction in the space and to come up with a concept for the staircase, the lighting and the dressing rooms. The store could easily have been one blank spacious room but she disrupts it a little by adding the turning mirror panel staircase and placing three mirrored changing room cubes in the middle of the room.

"The turning mirrors create a space that is in a constantly in flux," Krup explains. "The visitor entering the space is confronted with their reflection appearing and disappearing. The reflection of the light caused by the movement of the mirrors changes the experience of time and space, your entrance, your passage, your personal walk through the shop."

It isn't just the Jil Sander customers who will experience this reflective space. Passersby will see a constant movement in the windows as the white blinds slowly turn in, opening and closing the view into the shop.  Kruip wanted to "create a constant visual dialogue between the exterior and interior, between the world of fashion and art and the relation it has to the streets and the daily life passing by."