Modular fashion store triples as art gallery and charity

New York's Aksel Paris is combining its clothes retail store with an art gallery and social cause support center.

When we walk into certain businesses spaces we think we know what to expect, but sometimes they can surprise us. Munich-based Wash & Coffee is one example, pairing a Laundromat service with a café, and now New York’s Aksel Paris is combining its clothes retail store with an art gallery and social cause support center. Located on West Broadway in the Soho district of Manhattan, the company has ‘freedom’ as a core business belief and reflects this in its ability to mutate. The space is designed in a modular fashion, meaning that it can be easily redesigned to cater for the company’s different facets – in the daytime it primarily sells custom suits and shirts for men, while it can host art shows and charity fundraisers in the evenings. The flexible nature of the site means that these things can also go on simultaneously. With consumer attention spans potentially being diminished by our fast-paced society, could this kind of multi-facet business approach be the way forward?