FIRST BALENCIAGA STORE IN A EUROPEAN AIRPORT

Today Travel Retailer Lagardère opens a Balenciaga store in one of Europe's busiest airports, Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. The store is located in lounge 2, the shopping area behind security for intercontinental travelers. This is the first Balenciaga store at a European Airport.

Balenciaga is located in Lounge 2, the area for intercontinental travelers. The store, which offers women’s and men’s shoes, bags, accessories, eyewear, and jewelry, iterates on Balenciaga’s Raw Architecture concept, effecting an unfinishedor in-progress quality. In contrast to its surroundings, a concrete façade is unprimed and seemingly weathered, marked with a glowing Balenciaga logo. It opens up to a matching cylindrical column and similarly rough, colorless surfaces with patinas inspired by construction sites and gutted buildings. A floor of poured concrete tiles is textured to resemble in look and feel an outdoor sidewalk. Walls are paneled with distressed concrete or covered with mottled, concrete-grey curtains. A steel grid ceiling hung with industrial lighting reveals the technical infrastructure of the store. Aluminum shelves, display tables, worn leather seating, and aged hanging bars add to the atmosphere of decay and renewal, a stripped backdrop for a selection from the latest collections.