Make it big

Reiss Made Thought

After seeing Made Thought’s work for Stella McCartney in New York, Reiss founder David Reiss hired the designers to create graphic interventions within six new or updated stores alongside store design by Lever Hopley.

‘He felt the architecture was working well but wanted another layer. We term it a “graphic infection” which adds a bit of interest to surfaces that would normally be blank,’ says Made Thought’s Paul Austin.

It first created graphic patterns – floral for womenswear and geometric for menswear and then tackled everything from windows to furniture. At Brent Cross, a floral pattern was printed on to optically transparent film generally used as an anti-bomb device and then applied on to the glass shopfront. Within the stores, Made Thought screen-printed directly on to the sides and tops of the wooden display tables using a printing bed that could cope with the 50ml thickness. Other tables are treated with colour-fade film. At the Bluewater store a cumbersome boxed-in structural column was used as another surface for ‘infection’ – Made Thought stripped the column back to its bare concrete and re-boxed it into a glass case covered internally with the printed pattern.

‘It almost looks like an installation – making something that you’d normally hide away a focal point,’ says Austin.

Following the store implementation, Made Thought is now turning its attention to new packaging for Reiss.