Philipp Plein opens first sports store in Paris

The new luxury sportswear line, which the German designer Philipp Plein announced last summer on Instagram, has chosen the French capital as the home of its first store, the grand opening of which is this Friday. On Saturday, a second store will open in Amsterdam.

This first full-fledged Plein Sport store occupies a 102-square-meter space, at 250 rue de Rivoli, near the brand's Paris flagship store. In a release, the brand said that the store would "celebrate strength, muscle and endurance."

Designed by the Italian architecture firm CLS, the store features LED video screens on the ground floor that play videos of inspiring sports workouts or wavy graphics. Slogans such as "Train like a fighter" or "Home of the Strong" appear in neon letters or graffiti on rough concrete walls.

Everywhere the decor invokes the world of sports, simulating a gymnasium, a basketball court marked in red on the floor, a punching bag, or weight benches. Shoes have been cast in a starring role, covering an entire wall. They retail for around 300-350 euros.

This line, which started with a men's range before quickly adding items for women, has been conceived as an entirely separate brand, managed independently from the main Philipp Plein line and possessing its own distribution network. The group's goal is to position itself in the sports segment between very high-end luxury brands and diffusion lines.

The brand announced that this collection is already available in over 500 multi-brand stores. It plans to open another 50 standalone stores in two years.

The label, which is headquartered in Switzerland, will have a tally of 107 own stores by the end of the year. In October, it opened its first junior Philipp Plein store in Asia, Hong Kong Harbour City. The group posted revenue of 170 million euros in 2015 and expects to reach 198 million this year.

Philipp Plein opens first sports store in Paris

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