Inside Woolrich’s Award-Winning Experiential Milan Store

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9d5lN-8_MY

Earlier this year, Woolrich unveiled a 700 square-metre store at the heart of Milan’s Corso Venezia offering an experiential discovery of America’s oldest outdoor brand. The generous, well-lit space is envisioned to give visitors a glimpse into the brand’s 180-year story, passing from the urban metropolis of the entrance towards the peaceful, outdoor beginnings of the brand symbolised by its internal garden. At the heart of the shop floor in the lounge area, a museum display narrates the Woolrich brand story to provide an immersive brand experience for customers.

To heighten the experience, Woolrich has installed an immersive Extreme Weather Room, where visitors can test out the brand’s iconic parkas in authentic temperatures as low as minus 20°C. The 14 square-metre ‘freezer’ was designed with Japanese studio Wonderwall—who also worked with the brand to open its’ Tokyo and Berlin flagships—and features walls made from temperature-maintaining four-fold glass. Every night, the internal cooling cycle produces a new layer of artificial slow, recreating the Alaskan landscape that the brand calls home. In 1972, Woolrich created its iconic Arctic Parka to help protect thousands of Alaskan pipeline workers who were living for months in northern Alaska in -20F conditions. The Extreme Weather Experience Room allows customers to trial the conditions for which the Arctic Parka was designed. Tempered and tested by its harrowing origin, the Arctic Parka quickly became a best-seller and eventually a cornerstone of the Woolrich brand.