MERCI
DENIM.
MERCI DENIM is a local brand specializing in women’s jeans in Saigon. The shop owner is a girl who is passionate about painting. Outside of her busy time, paintings help her relax, find balance, and sometimes come up with new business ideas. Her dream is to one day have her small exhibition. These facts have led me to the idea of a combination between Mercidenim and art, between jeans and paintings. Mercidenim becomes now an art gallery. The relationship between paintings and jeans is unusual. Jeans placed next to abstract, artistic paintings bring about a unique feeling when viewed together.
The blue
You might find the design of Mercidenim quite simple. The store has a small square footage, a limited budget, and a tight construction timeline, which is why we didn’t choose intricate designs with expensive materials. Mercidenim’s design is based on the white background of the walls and ceiling, combined with the gray of the existing floor tiles. To create a quality and beautiful space with this relatively simple «color palette», we needed some breakthrough highlights in terms of colors and materials.
GAM took advantage of the homemade paintings, which only cost the price of buying paint, frames, and a little bit of the efforts. We borrowed the blue color, which represents the sky and the world-famous infinity of Yves Klein. This blue color also happens to be the color that Levi Strauss used to dye the rough jeans of miners made from denim in the late 19th century. There is only one shade of blue, but there is a variety of textures from the pigments and the diagonal fabric of the jeans. All these elements blend to become an important highlight in our design. In addition, to create a contrast between the softness of the white painted walls and the roughness of the paintings and jeans, we used the hardness, shininess, and slightly refractive properties of metal and glass. Opposites create balance.
Not just stopping at the combination of fashion and art rooms, we want the space of Mercidenim store to become a private room for the Mercidenim team, where they
welcome their customers as close friends. Because it is a «private room,» shoes must be left outside. We realize that every time people go shopping, they usually roam around the
clothing racks and displays, using the predetermined circulation. We have no prejudice against this arrangement, as many fashion stores, large and small, are designed this way. It’s just that we want to find unusual experiences and emotions not only for customers but also for employees or shop owners.
