Ex-model launches lingerie store

Lingerie concept store Apartment C is set to open on Marylebone High Street, London W1, with interior design by company founder Kenya Cretegny.

Cretegny, a former model and TV presenter, says she came up with the idea for Apartment C, which opens on 26 March, about two years ago after studying multidisciplinary design at Central St Martins College of Art and Design.

She says she decided to design the interiors herself because external designers ‘kept coming back to French boudoir design’.

Cretegny says, ‘I wanted to hark back to the 1960s Biba experience. For me, Apartment C is about hanging out in a cool apartment in your knickers, drinking gin and tonic out of a tea cup.’

The shop used to be an apartment on the ground floor and lower ground floor, and Cretegny says she took inspiration for it from ‘a blend’ of different apartments, as well as photographs of the homes of Serge Gainsbourg and Coco Chanel.

When work started on 1 January, Cretegny says she did not even have any elevations. ‘I had never even painted walls myself,’ she adds.

The store is organised into two separate rooms – the lounge and the library, with the lounge featuring a range of lingerie, and the library housing a 1930s bar and a series of 1960s and 1970s paperbacks . Cretegny says, ‘I wanted it to be imperfect, and also to have a residential feel.’


The branding has been created by HardHat Design. Cretegny says, ‘I wanted something without symmetry – I wanted to move away from glossy things.’


A website, designed by Surge Solutions, is set to go live when the store opens.


Surge managing director Nurul Basher says his consultancy has been working with Cretegny since last October after being introduced to her by a mutual friend. Cretegny says it will be an information-only website at first, but will be developed into a retail website next year.






 
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