Design That Speaks: Aime Leon Dore
unified across the digital and physical in high taste
Designs That Speak 📣
Welcome to the first drop of Designs That Speak where I explore different aesthetics across fashion, architecture, graphic design, and experiential design that catches my interest.
In my most recent visit to New York, I managed to get a reservation to stop by the Aime Leon Dore (ALD) flagship store off Mulberry St. in SoHo.
That’s one hell of a sentence, huh? A couple questions could arise:
Reservation? Did you go to a restaurant? No lol, it’s a retail clothing store.
What’s Aime Leon Dore? aimé leon dore
SoHo? yes Soho
I do want to catch you up on why this brand is worth caring about. For starters, it’s noteworthy for a few reasons. First, it’s meteoric rise in the culture starting with it’s collaboration with New Balance.
New Balances were something your Dad wore because it had really good arch support and probably recommended to him by his primary care physician after supplanting his foot onto a piece of paper thus revealing to your father that his foot is similar to that of a platypus’s — flat. What’s not flat, however, is the trajectory of both brands in the world of culture. Chunky shoes suddenly came into fashion. With this stellar collab, both brands made waves in streetwear culture (sorry this was the culture I’ve been implicitly referring to this entire time).
But another reason why ALD is noteworthy is because of its noticeable departure from the likes of other streetwear brands. ALD takes itself seriously. To understand what that means is to draw the juxtaposition from the brand to its neighboring New York based streetwear hypebeast brands — Supreme and Kith to name a few. ALD’s clothing and retail is much more “prep” than its counterparts, and the founder himself has spoken about “maturing the audience” alongside it’s design journey.
A Marriage Between The Physical And Digital
I could write on about the history of ALD, but truthfully I need to do more research and thus I’m ill-equipped. What I can share is my experience and what I marveled at. A reservation at the Mulberry store for ALD takes about ~25 minutes even at a random time like 12 pm on a Thursday. So what do you do? You get the chance to pop into Cafe Aime Leon Dore, their coffeeshop that’s attached literally and figuratively to the hip of the flagship.
I walk into the coffee shop, and I just remember feeling immediately packed. There’s very little breathing room in the “customer” area of the space. It sort of immediately feels claustrophobic, but I think that’s intentional by design. ALD is a streetwear brand, streetwear is about hype, hype is about a clear in-crowd and out-crowd. In other words, there’s a group of people who are on the “in",” and for hype to exists there needs to be a crowd that is included. But the crowd that is in the “in” needs to feel like they’re “in.” How do you make people feel like they’re in the in? You literally create a very small space where a line needs organically adjust because there isn’t room in order to order at the register.
There were a few things I immediately notice off the bat:
the backdrop behind the barristas are mirrors. So you walk in seeing yourself.
the countertops appear to be marble, and only break for an evenly leveled glass encasing to display product.
to the left and to the right of you are beautifully reddish wooden panels that lean into lovely bookcases and display, and all are warmly lit by ambient lighting from the lamps
the backdrop is some vibey jazz records, similar to the playlists sets they’ve been releasing online
When you walk in, it’s hard to escape the feeling that these people “give a fuck.” Like, they seriously give a fuck. Everything is well proportioned. Nothing is wasted. The checkout isn’t even your casual Square checkout, the wallpaper displays an old family photo of sorts. Across the walls are also the same old timey photos of various family functions and family members. You almost feel like you’re in a coffeeshop run by the Mafia for it’s made men, and made men only.
Into the Digital
The header to the cafe’s website is what I’m taking about when I’m referring to “old timey photo.” But notice the green banner head at the top of the webpage on mobile. This page, the cafe’s home page, is apart from the minimalistic design par the rest of the ALD site. You immediately get the feeling of an old timey cafe that is catered to a sort of aristocracy.
There’s a unity in design tastes, both digital and physical, in the ALD brand that commanded my attention and is the reason I am writing about it today. Few brands accomplish this sort of singularity. It shows a range in design taste. It shows an understanding of how to make the consumer “feel” across multiple mediums.
So what?
It’s really easy to be like “oh wow, that’s cool I guess.” Hear me out. In an increasingly digital world, where the average person spends 9+ hours on their phones, brands will need to require said aptitude. People are beginning to long for meaning in their physical experiences, but still itch for social validation in their digital. The ability to curate experiences that caters to one’s digital presence as well as the physical will become a matter of survival for brands not just something representative of “high taste.”
The Take-Away
ALD is a masterclass in a lot of things, but the lesson I want to highlight here is how to think about a unified design system across the digital and the physical. When you’re launching a brand/community/project that involves people and the need for scale for whatever purpose, you NEED to consider both of these elements. You need to think on two fronts. The more thoughtful and intentional you are, the more well-received your product will be. It’s true, most people will not be taking time out of their day to dedicate an entire newsletter to your work. But they will notice the “it” factor your brand has, the thing that the audience won’t be able to explain. That is, until some random brown dude in Oakland, CA decides to open his mouth about it.
Best,
Haroon
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