After a year of intense development Dalziel & Pow has created a modern and luxurious new store environment for David Jones, Australia’s most iconic department store, to help transform and re-establish this iconic brand. The design elevates the store experience with a more aspirational, fashion-led, premium attitude, differentiating David Jones from its competitors and appealing to a younger, more fashion-forward audience. Dalziel & Pow has designed the total experience, encompassing the interior design of the retail environment, a carefully crafted adjustment of the current graphic identity, a full communications and navigation approach for the retail space, and bespoke digital installations for multi-media storytelling about the brand and its offer.

This is a complete and comprehensive re-design of the brand and the customer experience. Bold, extraordinary, modern and sophisticated – it re-establishes David Jones’ brand principles through a restrained monochrome palette, premium finishes and bold digital statements. The customer journey is punctuated with a number of key features, including a striking casual fashion hub framed in red tinted glass, a clear destination for lingerie and footwear that brings authority to those ranges, and a premium branded atrium café offering great coffee in the heart of the retail space. One of the most exciting destinations is an interactive beauty ‘campus’ offering masterclasses and great value pampering treatments thanks to a partnership with Beauty EDU.

The concept debuted in October 2015 with a new two-floor, 77,000sqft department store at Eastland, Melbourne. It will be appearing across 10 more new stores over the next four months, while existing stores on Bourke Street, Melbourne, Pacific Fair and Wellington, New Zealand are being refreshed. Exceptional service goes hand-in-hand with the new format, with customers able to take advantage of Personal Shoppers and advisors, gift-wrapping, alterations, a gift registry kiosk, complimentary Wi-Fi in-store and a parent’s room.

The project has been realised with the close collaboration of David Jones’ in-house store development team, working with the brand’s retail, buying and merchandising teams to deliver the best possible results in an incredibly short timescale. A full-line department store, from inception to completion in a year. At the same time the ground floor of the Bourke Street store, its Melbourne Flagship, has been refurbished to create a new Luxury Accessories hall. This presents as a premium cluster of multi-brands in the central space, surrounded by a series of key brand shop-in-shop boutiques for the most upscale brand line-up in the city. These are the first steps in David Jones’ commitment to investing in design to create world class store environments, visual merchandising and systems, with the intention of maintaining this 177-year-old retailer’s position as the best department store in the southern hemisphere.