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MADE WITH LOVE WHITECHAPEL


Retail
East London
2023
Photography by Studio Waltzer and Andrew Gough


⊕ See also MWL BERMONDSEY



Made With Love Bridal’s European flagship store in Whitechapel, east London. The appointment-only shop is designed as a welcoming embrace, with three distinct boutiques wrapped by curving clay plaster walls, curtains and long lines of hanging dresses. “Finding the right wedding dress should be a joyful event. We wanted to create an environment that felt relaxed and familiar, but at the same time playful and exciting.” Two curving walls cut through the ground floor unit, disrupting the regularity of the space and creating a unique sense of enclosure in each boutique. The Clayworks natural clay plaster finish is manufactured in Cornwall from unfired clay and natural pigments. Its rich surface texture brings a grounded, earthy quality to the reception area, where the curving walls meet. Each boutique is designed as a lounge for the bride-to-be and their entourage, finished with soft white bouclé upholstered furniture, including design classics by Pierre Paulin and Paolo Piva. Informal changing spaces are nestled into the undulations of the walls, and enclosed with an arc of curtain. Slender black details in the light fittings, mirrors and ironmongery create accents in the otherwise pale material palette. Natural light filters into the space through the wedding dresses themselves, which are hung from bespoke suspended rails running parallel to the windows. “We wanted the dresses in the room, glinting in the light and catching your eye in the way that wedding dresses are designed to do. Made With Love have a huge range of designs – we had enough dresses to work with to essentially make walls out of them.” Glass partitions that had previously been installed as part of the former occupant’s fit-out have been repurposed to form offices and a staff room in the back of house area. A bespoke powder coated reception desk was built by local metal fabricator, Courtyard London, who were also responsible for the bespoke dress hanging and curtain rails. Studio MASH and Made With Love Bridal are beginning work on the brand’s first mainland European store, in Utrecht, in summer 2024.