PARIS INSPIRATION TOUR - NEW CONCEPTS REDEFINING THE STORE EXPERIENCE

Continuing our exploration of Paris’s ever-evolving retail landscape, our team set out to uncover some of the city’s most inspiring new retail concepts. From design-led boutiques to immersive brand spaces and wellness-driven concepts, these addresses highlight how Paris continues to expand the boundaries of experiential retail. More than places to shop, they are becoming spaces for discovery, emotion, community, and lifestyle engagement.

Discover our must-see destinations in the city:

EAST PACIFIC TRADE - KOREAN FOOTWEAR CULTURE

Credits: Cosmetics IC

Arriving from South Korea, East Pacific Trade brings a distinct expression of Korean footwear culture to Paris’s retail scene with a temporary pop-up open until June 19. The footwear brand blends refined minimalist design, curated artworks, and a dedicated sound system to create an immersive environment that goes beyond a traditional product showcase. With regular artist and DJ events, the space also acts as a community-driven platform, connecting the brand to contemporary creative culture while offering visitors a clear entry point into its aesthetic universe.

 52 Rue Charlot 75003 Paris

PARFUMS CARON - Perfume as design

Credits: Cosmetics IC

With its third Parisian boutique, Caron moves beyond the simple act of selling fragrance, transforming perfume retail into a true design and sensory experience. The contemporary store concept features a geometric interior dominated by metallic structures, where each fragrance is enhanced by a precise play of light, almost presented as an artwork. At the center of the space, the modern perfume fountain immediately captures attention, inviting visitors to engage with the scents at eye level. Defined by a singular energy and a calm atmosphere, the boutique creates a more intimate relationship between the customer and the fragrance.

332 Rue Saint-Honoré 75001 Paris  

Loewe - immersive brand narrative

Credits: Cosmetics IC

With its second Parisian address on Rue Saint-Honoré, Loewe moves beyond the traditional boutique format to create a true cultural destination. Designed like an art gallery, Casa Loewe brings together fashion, art, design, and craftsmanship in a highly curated environment, where marble, brass, and concrete meet sculptural furniture, historic portraits, and vivid color accents. This opening reinforces Loewe’s growing presence in Paris while highlighting a broader shift in luxury retail: stores are no longer purely transactional spaces, but places of discovery, emotion, and cultural engagement.

396 Rue Saint-Honoré 75001 Paris

noho - optimized wellness food

Credits: Cosmetics IC

In the heart of Paris, Noho brings the spirit of an LA-style health bar to the city’s evolving food and retail landscape. Dedicated to healthy drinks and functional food, the sleek and contemporary space offers a wide selection of superfood smoothies and protein shakes, supported by ingredients such as collagen, ashwagandha, sea moss, and electrolytes. The concept reflects the growing influence of wellness-led retail, where nutrition, performance, and lifestyle increasingly merge into everyday routines for active consumers seeking healthier, more optimized choices.

44 Rue du Louvre 75001 Paris

THe Cic take

Paris’s latest retail concepts confirm the renewed role of the physical store as a strategic tool for brand expression. These spaces are designed to make a brand’s positioning immediately tangible, translating identity into atmosphere, materials, and spatial experience. The growing presence of art and design plays a central role in this shift, helping brands create differentiation, build emotional value, and give consumers a clearer reason to engage beyond the transaction.

Inspiration Tours

Our Inspiration Tours are individually tailored guides to the world’s most inspiring beauty cities. From the K-beauty capital of Seoul to the laid-back cool of Los Angeles, we know where to shop and what to see to spark your next innovation.

For a closer look at the retail experiences shaping the future of beauty, contact us to arrange a bespoke inspiration tour of Paris with our team.

MILAN DESIGN WEEK 2026 - FROM OBJECT TO ECOSYSTEM

Credits: Miu Miu / Aesop / Arket

Milan, April 20-26, 2026 - As Milan Design Week unfolds alongside Salone del Mobile, a quieter but more deliberate shift takes shape across the city. Beyond spectacle, a growing sense of intentionality and slowness emerges, challenging the fast-paced, image-driven nature of contemporary design. What becomes evident is not that brands are newly building worlds, they always have, but that these worlds are now expressed with greater clarity, coherence, and depth.

From fashion houses to cultural institutions, the focus moves away from isolated objects toward immersive systems of meaning, designed to be experienced over time rather than instantly consumed. This year, Salone del Mobile reinforces this evolution with initiatives such as Salone Raritas, opening the fair to collectible, limited-edition design, alongside a renewed contract focus led by OMA. Together, these signals point toward a design landscape where rarity, narrative, and intentional experience take precedence over pure visibility.

Here are our 6 key initiatives of this design week :

AESOP - ARCHITECTURES OF LIGHT

Credits: Aesop

At the Chiesa del Carmine in Brera, Aesop presents The Factory of Light, a scenographic installation marking the launch of its first lighting collection, Aposē. Set against scaffolding printed with Milanese architectural façades, the space unfolds as an imagined city, structured around four immersive rooms dedicated to light.

For Aesop, light is not a metaphor but a core philosophy: “we illuminate every skin.” This conceptual grounding translates into three sculptural lamps (table, pendant, floor), all derived from the distorted geometry of the brand’s iconic hand balm tube. The project extends Aesop’s design language beyond skincare into the domestic sphere, transforming a functional object into a carrier of brand ethos. Here, product becomes environment, and environment becomes narrative.

JIL SANDER - THE VALUE OF STILLNESS

Credits: Jil Sander

In contrast to the hyperactivity of design week, Jil Sander proposes a radical slowdown. Reference Library, developed with Apartamento, transforms the brand’s Milan headquarters into a contemplative space where sixty books, each selected by creatives across disciplines, are displayed individually on chrome plinths under isolated light.

There are no products, no launches, no immediate outcomes, only sources. The installation reframes attention as a scarce resource, inviting visitors to engage in a slower, more deliberate form of discovery. Positioned as a human alternative to algorithmic consumption, the library becomes both archive and statement: a defense of depth, memory, and intellectual intimacy in an era of fragmentation.

EAMES - REFRAMING THE HOUSE

Credits: Triennale di Milano

At the Triennale di Milano, The Eames Houses exhibition introduces the Eames Pavilion System, a modular, prefab reinterpretation of the iconic Eames House. Developed with Kettal, the project translates the original vision into a flexible kit-of-parts architecture, adaptable to contemporary constraints.

Composed of aluminium frames and interchangeable panels, the system responds to today’s realities: mobility, climate variation, regulatory complexity, while preserving the conceptual integrity of the Eames legacy. Rather than replicating a singular object, it extends a way of thinking: one rooted in adaptability, clarity, and quiet innovation.

BOTTEGA VENETA - MATERIAL AS LIGHT

Credits: Bottega Veneta

With Lightful, Bottega Veneta continues its exploration of craft as a contemporary language. In collaboration with artist Kwangho Lee, the Via Sant’Andrea store becomes a study in material transformation, where woven leather structures interact with light to create shifting, atmospheric compositions.

Rendered in deep blacks and greens selected by Louise Trotter, the pieces oscillate between structure and softness, utility and abstraction. Light is not applied but embedded, revealing texture through shadow and movement. Beyond the installation itself, the project reflects a longer-term dialogue between brand and artist, an increasingly rare continuity that privileges depth over visibility.

ARKET x LAILA GOHAR - STAGING PLAY

Credits: Arket

At Giardino delle Arti, Laila Gohar’s collaboration with ARKET takes the form of an immersive, public installation centered around a reimagined carousel. Replacing traditional horses with oversized fruits and vegetables, the structure shifts from nostalgic object to spatial device.

The installation introduces Gohar’s first ready-to-wear collection, where utilitarian silhouettes meet unexpected detailing. Around it, a temporary café and interactive elements extend the experience beyond display into participation. Play becomes a framework: slowing movement, capturing attention, and reframing the everyday through scale and repetition. Clothing, object, and environment merge into a single experiential system.

MIU MIU - CULTURE AS PLATFORM

Credits: Miu Miu

With its Literary Club: Politics of Desire, Miu Miu continues to position itself at the intersection of fashion and intellectual discourse. Hosted during the week, the program brings together writers, thinkers, and audiences to explore themes of desire, consent, and self-determination through talks, readings, and curated texts.

Anchored in the works of Annie Ernaux and Ama Ata Aidoo, the initiative extends beyond event into platform, one that reinforces Miu Miu’s role as a cultural actor. Here, design is not material but conceptual, shaping conversations rather than objects.

THE COSMETICS IC TAKE

This Milan Design Week 2026 signals an evolution from brands designing isolated objects to cohesive worlds where product, space, and narrative increasingly converge.

Across Aesop, ARKET, and Bottega Veneta, value lies in the ability to create immersive systems, where a product becomes an entry point into a broader, unified experience.

At the same time, a counter-movement emerges around slowness and intentionality. Jil Sander and Miu Miu highlight the growing importance of attention, depth, and cultural engagement, suggesting that in a saturated landscape, creating space for pause and reflection is becoming a powerful luxury lever.

Materiality and adaptability also still stand out as key drivers. From tactile, expressive materials to flexible design systems, brands are responding to a need for both emotional resonance and evolving usage.

3 Days of Design 2025 - Design That Speaks to the Senses

Photo credits: @charlottetaylr - Tekla - Bread and Butter

Copenhagen, June 18–20, 2025 - In just a few years, 3 Days of Design has quietly become one of the world’s most anticipated design events. More intimate than Milan, more fluid than Paris, it has carved out a space for itself with the same effortless elegance as Copenhagen, the city it calls home. This year’s theme, "KEEP IT REAL", is a call for design that is authentic, emotional, and deeply human.

Across historic showrooms, atmospheric installations and temporary creative residencies, a powerful narrative emerged: design is entering a new sensorial age, where material, function and feeling are inextricably linked.

Tekla -  The Romance of Comfort

Tekla

At the majestic Charlottenborg Palace, Copenhagen-based textile brand Tekla unveiled its new collection through a dreamlike installation titled Modern Romance. Known for its minimalist homeware, the brand reintroduces broderie anglaise in a contemporary, understated way: refined bed linens made with organic cotton and delicate trims, echoing heirloom quality with a modern twist.

Set among wooden beds in a scenography by architecture studio Mentze Ottenstein, the exhibition created a compelling dialogue between the ornate, historic surroundings and the quiet intimacy of crafted textiles. The collection draws on the rich decorative codes of European bedding traditions, yet distills them into something simple, pure, and emotionally tactile. It’s a sensitive blend of heritage and softness, illustrating our growing desire for rituals, textures, and a gentler rhythm of life.

Bread and Butter - Objects in Perfect Harmony

Bread and Butter

At Korean restaurant Ouri, the Bread and Butter exhibition presented a whimsical and thoughtful exploration of complementary objects for the dining table. Curated by Hee Choi and Pyeori Jung, 12 international designers created custom pieces inspired by the warm, comforting palette of bread and butter, from pale cream to rich brown.

A chromatic range that just so happens to echo our Color of the Year “Lime Butter”: soft, sensorial, and full of possibility.

Highlights included: 

• Mouth-blown carafes with sculptural coasters by Maria Bruun 

• A resin wine cooler and tray set by Forever Studio

• An off-kilter ceramic cup and saucer by Hun Lee that balance each other with poetic precision

More than just beautiful objects, these designs expressed a deeper message: that harmony lies in relationships, between forms, functions, and gestures. The idea of the perfect pair becomes a metaphor for a more intentional, interdependent way of living, one rooted in collaboration and care.

Home from Home - A Study in Light and Emotion

@charlottetaylr

At Noura Residency, a cinematic apartment-style location, art director and designer Charlotte Taylor presented Home from Home - an evocative exploration of domesticity. In a series of atmospheric rooms featuring emerging and established talents (including chairs by Kasper Kyster and stone glasses by Diego Sanchez Barcelo), Taylor invited visitors to reflect on the emotional choreography of space: where objects settle, how light moves, and how the textures of daily life build meaning over time.

This is not a static home, but a living one, suspended between stillness and transformation. It’s an invitation to consider not only how we live, but what lives with us.

The Sound of Material - Tactility at the Core

The Sound of Material

Curated by Natalia Sánchez, The Sound of Material brought together 25 designers and makers working across ceramics, textiles, paper, lighting, glass, and more. Each piece explored the transformative potential of materiality, whether rooted in centuries-old craft or driven by new design technologies.

From hand-shaped surfaces to digitally generated forms, the works invited us to engage physically and emotionally. Sensoriality, through texture, weight, sound, and presence, was the unifying thread. This was design that doesn’t just decorate space but activates the senses, reminding us of the quiet power of the objects we live with every day.

The Cosmetics IC Take

At Cosmetics Inspiration & Creation, we see the 2025 edition of 3 Days of Design as a clear signal: design is becoming more sensorial, intentional, and emotionally intelligent. And this evolution holds deep relevance for beauty, wellness, and luxury brands. Here are some of the most strategic insights:

• Elevated sensoriality: In a visually saturated world, touch, light, scent, and texture offer powerful, differentiated experiences. Brands should think beyond visual aesthetics to create multisensory rituals and emotional anchors.

• Comfort as modern luxury: Tekla’s blend of minimalist design and romantic detailing taps into a broader yearning: for comfort, nostalgia, and softness. Modern luxury today is less about opulence, more about emotional refuge.

• Complementary design thinking: The idea of pairs, as explored in Bread and Butter, opens fresh territory. Products that complete each other or interact in intuitive ways (like tool + formula, care + gesture, serum + scent) foster deeper engagement.

• Designing for everyday rituals: Home from Home reminded us that small, daily interactions matter. Brands have the opportunity to design for how people really live, considering moments of pause, care, and quiet transformation.

NYCxDESIGN 2025 Guide: Emerging Design Codes

@audocph - @kikigoti - Les Collection by @lisaluvsit

From May 15 to 21, New York City will once again become the stage for NYCxDESIGN, the city’s annual festival of design innovation. Stretching across all five boroughs, from Manhattan’s galleries to Brooklyn’s studios and Ridgewood’s creative hubs, the event celebrates a pluralistic vision of design rooted in identity, independence, and social engagement.

This year’s edition reveals a distinct shift in tone. Unlike the theatrical opulence seen in Milan, NYCxDESIGN 2025 centers emerging voices and independent studios, foregrounding design as both a functional discipline and a cultural message.

Shelter - Vol.1: Mart Nouveau

Les Collection - @lisaluvsit

@audocph

@atelier_ollin

A debut fair curated by Afternoon Light, Shelter gathers over 100 brands and studios. From names like Les Collection or Audo Copenhagen to Atelier Ollin, it creates a hybrid landscape where collectibility, market-readiness, and storytelling converge. A democratic showcase for design in the post-retail age.

Biome by Lichen Studio

@vyvoistudio

@weskn0ll for @malcolmransome

@yuxuan_huang__

In Ridgewood, design shop and studio Lichen curates a show shaped by ecological thinking. Biome explores the relationship between physical environment and creative identity, featuring work by artists such as Yuxuan Huang, Vy Voi, Malcom Ransome and Reginald Sylvester II. It’s a meditation on material memory and the porous boundary between past and present.

Outside/In - Lyle Gallery

@pauljmillerphoto for Monica Curiel

@kawabi

@soft.geometry

At Lyle Gallery on the Lower East Side, Outside/In draws inspiration from the Outsider Art movement. This multidisciplinary exhibition, led by queer and women founders Lin and Magdalena Tyrpien, amplifies experimental, self-determined voices such as Soft Geometry, Kawabi and Monica Curiel. The result is a community-rooted exploration of design as resistance and personal mythology.

Forced Perspective

@sahrajajarmikhayat - Ellen Pong

@kikigoti

@sahrajajarmikhayat - Office of Tangible Space

A timely, two-day exhibition, Forced Perspective examines how design responds to misinformation and fragmented narratives. Curated by NJ Roseti, Kiki Goti, Caleb Ferris, and The House Special Studio, the show presents collectible works by 15 New York-based talents, including Office of Tangible Space and Heechan Kim. Furniture and objects become vessels for political critique and collective memory.

ICFF x WANTED – Designing in Harmony

Daniel Gruetter

@ryin - Ah Um Design Studio

@juniperdesigngroup

At the Javits Center, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair returns with a renewed focus: sustainability, inclusivity, and emotional connectivity. Under the theme Designing in Harmony, the fair spotlights emerging voices through the WANTED platform, such as Ah Um Design Studio and Daniel Gruetter, while installations by Grohe and Juniper point toward a softer, sensory future of space-making.

THE CIC TAKE

NYCxDESIGN 2025 highlights a clear shift: design is becoming more intentional, contextual, and community-driven. For brands, this means moving beyond aesthetics to engage with creators who embody cultural relevance and ethical resonance. This design week offers not only a glimpse into tomorrow’s aesthetics, but into the ethics, values, and systems that will define the next decade of design.

For more cultural decoding and insights, check our other articles.

Design Inspiration: Copenhagen

Photo Credit: Tekla

During June 12-14, international brands and designers descended on the Danish capital for 3daysofdesign. This year’s festival asked exhibitors to “Dare to Dream”, and imagine radical design solutions to today’s challenges. 

Leading Scandinavian brands, including Hay, Tekla, Hem, and Muuto, took part in exhibitions and pop-ups all across the city, showcasing new products, novel concepts and unexpected collaborations. This year, a number of beauty brands also exhibited, exploring the axis of lifestyle and well-being through a series of immersive activations.

At 3daysofdesign, radical ideas tackled contemporary issues – sustainability, inclusivity, health, well-being - but with an emphasis on the type of elevated beauty, emotion and craft that is intrinsic to Scandinavian savoir-faire. 

Within this dream realm, unconventional ideas emerged, carrying profound meanings that hinted at possibilities once thought unattainable.  Designers explored uncharted territory with natural and recycled materials, pushing boundaries for a healthier planet and a more empowered future. While beauty brands demonstrated the overlap of lifestyle, emotion and well-being, via a series of intentional and purposeful activations. Read on to discover Cosmetics IC’s highlights:

The Ordinary x Home in Heven

Photo credits: Frederik Lentz Andersen

The Ordinary, known for its affordable, considered skincare, collaborated with NYC-based conceptual glass studio Home in Heven to create an interactive installation that explored the theme of sustainable reuse.  Riffing on the brand’s core pillar of transparency, Heven created sculptural (fully working) glass bathroom vanities, made from recycled The Ordinary bottles. 

Aesop Aromatorium

Photo Credits: Brian Buchard / Aesop

Aesop introduced the multi-sensorial Aromatorium at Transcendence, a new exhibition concept in Refshaleøen. Curated by renowned Danish architect Frederikke Aagaard, Transcendence seeks to challenge our understanding, perception, and acceptance of materials in the objects and experiences around us.

The Aromatorium invites visitors to tell the time through scent - fragrances are chosen to reflect different times of the day and are dispensed directly on the wrists via a lab-like device. The travelling booth (first shown at Milan Design Week) brings Aesop’s fragrances to life in a uniquely multi-sensorial way. 

The Cosmetics IC Take

The relationship between the home and personal well-being is reinforced by the growing presence of beauty brands at key global design events.  Dive deeper into the latest wellness trends in our Inspiration Report: Beauty Protopia, available now.

Trend Inspiration: Maison&Objets 2024

Wint Design Lab - Photo by Cosmetics IC

With the theme of Tech Eden, the 30th-anniversary edition of Maison&Objet (18-22 January, Paris) invited exhibitors to consider how the symbiosis of technology and nature will inform future design scenarios. 

Cosmetics Inspiration & Creation’s Coralie Arme, Forecasting & Insights Consultant, explored the show at Paris’ Parc Expo Villepinte, to uncover the top 3 fields of innovation to inspire future-focused solutions for the beauty industry. 

“This year's theme explored the vital links between technology and nature, showcasing future-facing design that improves overall well-being and prioritizes environmental sustainability.” Coralie Arme, Cosmetics Inspiration & Creation Consultant in Forecasting and Insights. 

1.Symbio-tech: Augmenting nature

WINT Design Lab perfectly embodied the show’s symbiotic emphasis, as the Berlin-based design and research lab explored the relationship between ecological and technological responsibilities.

The studio overcomes disciplinary silos to tackle today's challenges through various projects including bio-textile innovation. Collaborating with biotech startup Mimotype, WINT has developed a high-performance outdoor textile created from 100% collagen. Through this future-proof innovation, the design lab is tapping into the potential of quick iteration cycles.

In beauty,  there is a growing normalization of human augmentation through technology (AI-supported healthcare, adaptive and personalized systems, circadian rhythm lighting, etc).  Harnessing technology to stimulate natural processes, Solaris Laboratories’ LED Intensive Hair Growth Stimulating Brush is an advanced hair and scalp treatment technology that helps prevent hair loss and reverse thinning hair. 

Wint Design Lab - Photo by Cosmetics IC

Solaris Laboratories NY - Photo by Cosmetics IC

2. Upscaling waste: Imagining new-gen materials

Mâche&Maché is a culinary design studio committed to exploring the hyper-future of food. For the show, at the “Inspire me!” by Peclers corner, the studio showcased “Papier Alimentaire” - an edible (and decorative) packaging material made from waste fruit and vegetables designed for large-scale use in the food industry. According to the studio, for sustainable food to be widely accepted, it must offer a more desirable experience than today's standard fare.

In the wellness corner, Japanese brand Incense Kitchen showcased a new incense created from repurposed matcha. The brand advocates recycling matcha into tea incense (instead of perfume) to prevent the wasteful disposal of fine matcha particles in factory machines and air purifiers, providing an alternative and more sustainable outcome.

Mâche&Maché x Peclers - Photo by Cosmetics IC

Incense Kitchen - Photo by Cosmetics IC

3. Healing homes: Anti-anxiety interiors

When one crisis follows another, the actions needed to respond sometimes seem out of reach. Modern society is gripped by an anxiety epidemic, and designers are charged with providing solutions that holistically ease discomfort. The notions of sensoriality and fluidity are thus at the heart of tomorrow's design challenges. 

Furniture and objects exhibited sinuous, undulating curves to give everyday settings the air of primitive landscapes with spiritual dimensions. Roundness is as de rigueur as ever, transforming living spaces into cocoons of comfort. Sofas, armchairs, and chairs play a common score, that of an enveloping, reassuring hug.

Mathieu Lehanneur's "Outonomy" offers an alternative vision of survivalist habitats. By questioning the kind of life we want to lead, Outonomy proposes a return to an original cave, with the comforts we no longer wish to give up.

In beauty, Austrian skincare brand Be […] my friend uses only the purest organic, plant-based ingredients to provide maximum care for the skin, while at the same time minimizing stress. The two pillars of the brand are to elevate the way the skin is treated, while simultaneously elevating the way the environment is treated. 

“Outonomy” by Mathieu Lehanneur - Photo by Cosmetics IC

Be [..] my friend - Photo by Cosmetics IC

The Cosmetics IC Take

Tech Eden suggests a Protopian vision of the future - a natural awakening, enriched by technological innovations - from biotextiles and 3D printing to AI-powered design. Nature remains omnipresent through radical interpretations of color, form, and material.

In our latest Makeup Inspiration from the US report - Protopian Beauty - we investigate the latest product innovations in the US and explore how technological acceleration is paving the way for a  more progressive future. For more information on this report, and for details on our upcoming animations at MakeUp in Los Angeles (Feb 14/15 2024) - drop us a line today.