Machine-A and Smets Take Over Selfridges Corner Shop for Fashion Month – WWD

Selfridges is in good company this September, as the London-based concept store Machine-A and multibrand retailer Smets from Brussels are taking over the Corner Shop at the department store’s Oxford Street flagship in London in order to showcase the power of physical retail and designer fashion.

The four-week pop-up & Good Company that opens Monday will feature a range of items from emerging designers, exclusive drops and pieces from Selfridges’ sustainability-focused projects Project Earth and Reselfridges.

The selection is curated by the Selfridges team, as well as Stavros Karelis and Pascaline Smets, founders of Machine-A and Smets, respectively.

Machine-A will bring some 22 brands to the pop-up, 16 of which will be new to Selfridges, as well as a vintage edit under the concept Machine-B, which is an ongoing collaboration between Machine-A and vintage brand Byronesque.

The Tomorrow-owned store is also launching its first merchandise collection to celebrate the opening of the Machine-A Shanghai later this month.

Featuring graphics designed by Paul Hetherington, who reimagined the Machine-A logo into four styles — as well as quotes from Raf Simons, Matthew Williams, Martine Rose and Coperni sharing the reasons why they love Machine-A — the limited run of T-shirts will be available in The Corner Shop, as well as Machine-A Shanghai.

Smets will bring three emerging Belgian designers — Valentine Witmeur Lab, Leo and Arte Antwerp — to Selfridges for the first time and offer a selection of design pieces, including sculpture, candles and books, as well as a 27-piece archival edit of Alaïa jewelry and ready-to-wear pieces from the brand’s spring and fall 2017 collections.

Sebastian Manes, buying and merchandising director at the Central Group and Signa-owned retailer Selfridges, said the & Good Company project is about “sharing inspiration and creativity from some of the best independent multibrand stores globally.”

“We are fascinated by curation and the way these founders have approached fashion; they both have such unique ways that we wanted to give them a platform to express this even further. We are delighted to support their businesses by offering them our best collaborative retail platform, The Corner Shop,” he added.

Karelis said the collaboration with Selfridges is a landmark moment for Machine-A as it marks “the first-time retailers in London have decided to unite forces and their communities in such a dynamic way, during a month when London celebrates the best of design talent.”

Smets added that her namesake store “is not only about fashion, but we have also curated an offering of artwork from photographer Julien Boudet along with design pieces from Le Cactus Bleu from Gufram. We hope the Selfridges customers will get a glimpse of our spirit.”