The ‘New Spring’ installation for Milan 2017 will have you graming and hashtaging like nobody’s business. And it’s the marker of what next-gen retail should be.

At last year’s Salone Del Mobile, COS blew some minds with their Sou Fujimoto Forest of Light collaboration. The year before that, they joined forces with famed New Yorkers Snarkitecture to produce the Cavernous Fabric Retreat. They were what every physical brand exercise should be – Instagramable. Why? It makes great user-generated content. Imagine launching a collection where your target market does the media work for you! The value of peer-to-peer recommendations on social media cannot be understated, and here, the design industry has a very critical role to play in creating living branded spectacles for our clients.

Frequently teaming up with key architects and designers around the world, fashion house COS is arguably leading the pack in the user-generated content space. And their most recent effort with London firm Studio Swine (and sixth time overall for Salone Del Mobile) is no exception.

To launch the COS S/S17 collection, Studio Swine an artistic duo between Japanese architect Azusa Murakami and British artist Alexander Groves, will create an immersive, multi-sensory experience for Salone Del Mobile 2017 that, with the name of New Spring, reflects the optimism and renewal that results from seasonality. The installation is of course, all about theatre, aiming to “evoke the memories of joy and vitality”.

“We have been inspired by the thoughtfulness of studio swine’s work for some time now and are so thrilled to see New Spring coming to life. I hope their idea for this year’s installation will capture the imagination of those who visit. It is a joy for us to invite such talented creatives to collaborate and ultimately for us to engage with the creative community we draw inspiration from so regularly at COS,” says COS creative director, Karin Gustafsson.

Sourcing influence from the Sakura Festival of Japan, the centrepiece of the New Spring installation is a focal sculpture, emitting mist-filled blossoms that burst and evaporate on contact with skin, but lingers momentarily when met with textured fabrics. It’s ethereal, interactive and total gram-bait.

For those of you making the Milan pilgrimage this year, the COS x Studio Swine New Spring installation will be open to the public during the fair from 4th to 9th April, hosted at the Cinema Arti – an inactive 1930s theatre built by Italian architect Mario Cereghini.