The best of 2010: The top three retail Seeds of the year

Italy, UK, US – My favourite Seeds from the retail world have an overarching theme of the home and feature a house in a room, a whole store as a home and a designer very much at home presenting a brave new digital vision.

The Maison in a Room installation was a collaboration between Maison Martin Margiela and Milan boutique 10 Corso Como to coincide with the Belgian design house’s first moves into furniture design and were on show at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile. It’s the kind of immersive brand experience I expect to see now from collaborative retail.

Louis Vuitton’s London Maison was four years in the making and saw the brand’s New Bond Street flagship store transformed into ‘the most luxurious Louis Vuitton store to date’, according to designer Peter Marino. The three floors covering 1,500 square metres were conceived as the home of a collector, who loves only the best and rarest pieces of art. After seeing it in action, my favourite piece was the Credit Card Destroying Machine, an industrial looking moving sculpture by Michael Landy.

Ralph Lauren celebrated 10 years of online digital innovation with what the brand called a 4D show projected on to the side of its London and New York flagship stores. The sensory, live experience was a great example of how luxury brands are tapping into the trend for Conviviality Culture .