Pop Up Les Marolles
July 10 2019 – Kristina ZOUEIN
KINAMANIA POP UP JUNE 22-23 IN THE MAROLLES, BRUSSELS
Three weeks ago, KinaMania popped up with 4 other brands in the Marolles neighbourhood of Brussels for a 2-day boutique concept.
{ I actually intended to write this post much earlier, but you know how time flies by, especially that I am in the midst of finalising the upcoming shoes and leather goods collections. I just got back from a 2-day trip to Portugal visiting the shoe maker, last supplier, leather warehouses and tanneries. The next blog post will probably be about my trip. }
Back to the pop-up: so story telling sandals (KinaMania), colorful geometrical jewelry (Comme Une Plume), vintage hand-painted bow ties (Desirée Fabray), leather and fabric stylish aprons (Les Tabliers de l’Atelier) and custom made wedding dresses (Alix Romann) met for one weekend in the trendy lively bohemian Brusselleer neighbourhood of the Marolles famed for its charming streets lined with antique shops and beautiful buildings. And it was a success!
KINAMANIA SUSTAINABLE DISPLAY
With a continuing focus on sustainability KinaMania collaborated with interior designer Sabine Boghossian for the display installation of this pop-up. We used 102 kraft boxes, of which 24 were colored with water based paint on the sides, and ecofriendly riso A4 prints for the wall installation printed with Frau Steiner studio.
Like me prior to this project, you might have never heard about risograph printing. Think of it as a digital silk screen printing technique. The risograph is a stencil duplicator which prints one color at a time with vegetable soy-based inks (as compare to traditional petroleum-based inks) and the machine uses little power compared to other printers which makes it environmentally friendly.
No matter how precise I tried to be working my colours and transparencies on Photoshop, the studio kept insisting that I wouldn’t really know the artistic result until it came out of the printer (an informed risk you need to take with this printing technique). And fortunately the result turned out quite funky and unexpected! And the wall installation looked cheerful and bold.
KINAMANIA NEXT STEP
I am now super motivated to move forward to the next step which is to celebrate with you the opening of the KinaMania workshop and showroom! Stay tuned.