Sensuous settings

The Armani/Casa store, located on London’s New Bond Street, is Giorgio Armani’s first home furnishings flagship to launch in the UK. With its open-plan layout and mocked up living areas, the store is designed to feel like the perfect home environment, so why did I feel so out of place?

Perhaps it was the throngs of an all-in-black dressed crowd, impossibly chic, perfectly blending into a darkened interior, softly lit like a 1940s opium den, shadows dancing off black Plexiglas panels and mirrored floors. Or maybe it’s just because my living room is never going to look like an Armani one.

The collection, which ranges from lighting through to stationery and silver leaf-lined tables, is all designed in-house from Armani’s headquarters in Milan. Products are cleverly scattered throughout the store to recreate the domestic environment, and with very little shelving around to remind you that this is, in fact, a shop. Despite the great man being conspicuously absent, you can easily feel as if you are nosing around Giorgio Armani’s pad. And perhaps this is the point.

The punter can now get a glimpse, take home or even use a bespoke interior design service to create their very own part of Armani’s glamorous – and ever-extending – world. Armani/Casa is located on 113 New Bond Street, London W1