Siam Discovery gets naked

SIAM DISCOVERY certainly has grown up. The mall is 18 years old now and has celebrated by stripping off its clothes – and the grand unveiling yesterday drew more than a few wolf whistles. 

“Come play with us,” says Siam Piwat chief executive Chadatip Chutrakul. “We have stripped off our clothes and become faceless so that we can be friends with everyone without boundaries.”

Gone are all obstructions and anything that might possibly be considered dull. Instead the facade is an immense sheer wall of glass, behind which are stacks of open-plan floors, each with a high ceiling, free-flowing structures and a startling lighting system.

Seemingly breaking all the rules of retailing, the mall is no longer a market whose tenant shopkeepers pay rent but rather a single, 40,000-square-metre mingling of interactive retailing and hybrid sales concepts. 

Siam Piwat, which also operates Siam Paragon and Siam Center and spent Bt4 billion refurbishing Siam Discovery, has jettisoned the notion of organising products by category and brand in favour of what it calls “storytelling components” by which shoppers “discover, define and create their own distinct and personal style”. 

“We call our place the Exploratorium – a lifestyle lab where visitors are drawn into ‘stories’ for an emotional experience relevant to their style, interests, beliefs and trends, rather than just being presented with a selection of products,” Chadatip told the press on Thursday.

The company happily put its faith in Japanese design studio Nendo to create “inspiring stories” for customers.

“In the age of the Internet where you can get information and everything else you need with a single click, my task was to create the experience and emotion you can’t get from e-commerce,” said Oki Sato, who founded Nendo in 2002. His firm does architecture, graphic design, interiors, furniture and various witty products.

“The DNA of my design is storytelling – a small, certain thing that relates to people’s emotions while creating a link between them, the object and the venue,” he said.

Nendo teamed with local firm Urban Architect, which handled Siam Center’s major facelift, and has previously collaborated with Thai product designers on tableware and stationery to be marketed in the next few months.

People today prefer personalised purchases and are immersed in digital and innovative technology, Chadatip noted. They look for value in products. Siam Discovery mingles more than 5,000 foreign and local brands over eight floors and many of them can be personalised through bespoke services, she said.

“The new generation of consumers isn’t obsessed with any particular brands and they don’t want to be followers. They love to mix and match to make a statement about their own style, saying, ‘This is what I am and I am like no other.’”

With the customer-centric mall now truly a “discovery lab”, the ground floor is designated “Her Lab” – ladies garments, etc.

Finding the right lipstick to match the colour of your lips becomes less of a hassle with local makeup brand Passion Ville letting you create your own custom-coloured, liquid matte shades. That’s on offer for Bt590 until June 6. 

You can check the available palette and then ask the specialists to adjust the tones – or just have them capture your face onscreen so you can digitally apply different shades to see what’s best.

Like scientists, the specialists blend colours on a flat surface with a silver spatula and dab the resulting mix on customers’ faces. Lipsticks can also be infused with scent – grape, chocolate, vanilla, rose or melon. 

The finished product you take home is in a tube equipped with a light and tiny mirror, and the cap can be engraved with your initials.

“Just tell us which shade of colour you want and we’ll help you find the exact hue that’s right for your lips and skin,” says manager Pathitta Suthakitmanat. “A hue might look bright on one person’s lips and dark on another’s. But a lot of customers prefer darker shades, like black and grey, to give them a distinctive look.”

M Floor has “His Lab” for the guys, also devoted to personal grooming and style. It has a multitude of skincare, clothing and accessory brands and a posh men-only barbershop. 

Barberford Noir is a great place to get your beard trimmed and your hair cut or permed, or to just relax with a facial treatment under a hot towel. Customers proceed through five grooming stations, each with its own upholstered reclining chair. 

Both men and women can design their own denim jeans with another local brand, Selvedgework, in the “Street Lab” on the first floor. This is where you find all the “street” styles. 

Selvedgework offers more than 30 choices of denim from Japan, Italy and the US. You tell them how you want your slacks cut – super skinny, skinny, slim, straight or regular – and your preference in thread colour, button shanks, rivets, leather patches, logo tags, pocket linings and even the font for your laser-etched initials. The prices start at Bt6,900.

“We have fits for both men and women with waist sizes from 25 to 50 inches,” a staff member explains. “It takes about two weeks to have your own personal pair of jeans made by hand.”

Walkin, another Thai brand, does tailor-made leather sneakers for men and women. You get to choose the leather, colour and lace type and have your initials engraved at the back, all for Bt3,990 (sizes 35-39) or Bt4,240 (size 40 and up). It takes about two weeks to get a pair made.

Joggers and those crazy people who enter triathlons will head to Alpha Runner and undergo a “gait analysis” – accurate measurement of their movement patterns. 

You just run for a few minutes on a treadmill while a video camera watches your feet. From this you can learn your arch height, the alignment of your Achilles tendons with your legs and much more, the better to find your perfect running shoes – and even avoid recurring injury.