London Living, a pop-up ‘shop’ created by John Lewis on the third floor of its Oxford Street flagship, is like taking an apartment and forgetting to put doors and corridors from one room to the next.
It is, however, a good demonstration of what’s possible with a little imagination and a fair amount of surplus space that can be used for promotional purposes.
Whether it’s a highly styled bedroom or the dining room with fake green bamboo backdrop, this is different from the workaday John Lewis homewares way of doing things. It also happens to be in the middle of a floor that is expansive in whichever direction you happen to glance - meaning that it has to have above-average graphics and point of sale if it is to succeed.
It is actually pretty unlikely that shoppers will, as it were, buy from the plan as evinced by London Living, but it does provide a pretty good idea of what’s possible, given the products that are on sale across the rest of the floor. It is also unusual in that it is very much against what might be considered the traditional John Lewis grain - showing how things are done in a manner more reminiscent of Ikea or perhaps Next, than Middle England’s favourite.
As such it is symptomatic of what might be termed the ‘new’ John Lewis, where a primacy is placed on the manner in which items are displayed and the vehicle that houses them. The London Living pop-up will continue in its current form until the end of this month. It will be interesting to see what happens when the space becomes available once more and whether the retailer will revert to commodity-style presentation.
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