Smooth as silk, South Yarra's Le Louvre salon decked out as Hermes luxury pop-up shop
A Hermès pop-up store has opened in South Yarra timed to accompany Melbourne’s spring racing carnival celebrations.
Not quite the full-on orange box, it's in the Le Louvre salon in stylish South Yarra, which attracts Melbourne’s style seekers.
The temporary store comes with a uniquely created silk scarf, designed by Bali Barret, deputy artistic director of women’s collections at Hermès, as homage to the Ballarat dressmaker Lillian Wightman, the founder of Le Louvre.
Bali Barret, created the Monsieur & Madame signature Hermes scarf design, integrating the signature ocelot print of style doyenne Miss Wainwright, who died two decades ago at 90.
Le Louvre, which offers fashion, art and design, is just off Chapel Street on Daly Street.
With its main display under its arched entrance, and two side windows, Australia's first Hermes pop-up follows similar pop-ups in Liberty of London in 2009, and then Colette in Paris.
In June this year the famous French luxury house opened a pop-up store of 80 square metres of retail space dedicated to its shoes at 8 rue de Sèvres in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.
It was in 2010 when Le Lourve, the Collins Street landmark, set up in South Yarra, having been on the Paris end of Collins Street since the 1930s but swallowed up by a high-rise tower.
Its owner, Georgina Weir, and her colleague Amelia Coote, the daughter of the late famous former Melbourne interior designer John Coote, worked with Domenic Ridolfi, director of Ridolfi Architects, to transform the two-storey 1920s red brick shell that had been originally used by the tramways.
The shop is bordered by the Deague family's art series hotel, The Olsen, on one side and another site where the China-based builder LYZ Property Group has its 20-level, 432-unit development site for the apartment tower called Lucia.
