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There is just under a month to go until February 21st when 10 Corso Como, a concept store founded in the nineties by Carla Sozzani and in 2019 taken over by Tiziana Fausti’s Exor holding, will unveil the new spaces resulting from a major restyling.
The new spaces dedicated to exhibitions and projects
The renovation project – which aims to rethink the multi-brand to offer customers an increasingly unique and 360-degree shopping experience, as told by CEO Gianluca Borghi to Il Sole 24 Ore – will operate on different spaces on rotation. During the women’s fashion week in February, the new looks of the Gallery and the Project Room, redesigned by the 2050+ agency, will be presented. The concept store was born with the intention of being a point of reference for the city not only on the shopping front but also on that of culture. Fausti wanted to underline the importance of art and culture also in the new course of 10 Corso Como: in the renovated Gallery, in conjunction with the women’s fashion week in February, 10 Corso Como inaugurates “Happy Birthday Louise Parker”, a solo exhibition of American artist Roe Ethridge (Miami, 1969). The retrospective, curated by Alessandro Rabottini, is the first in Italy dedicated to the artist. The Project Room was conceived as a dynamic and flexible space, capable of transforming depending on the projects it welcomes. On the occasion of the opening to the public it will open with the retrospective “Pietro Consagra. Ornaments”: edited by Alessio de’ Navasques.
The new 10 Corso Como project is in line with the idea that multi-brand stores must leverage not only a selection of high-level brands and garments, but also the idea that the shopping experience must go beyond simple purchase. And that the human component of welcoming and “involving” customers (even if 70% foreign, as in the case of 10 Corso Como) also leverages a hybrid dimension.
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Multi-brands are experiencing a complex moment. Global forecasts for the current year speak of zero growth in wholesale sales in physical stores (the estimate is from the Altagamma Consensus 2024, presented in November) and American department stores – although engaged in a strategic rethink – continue to go through a moment not simple (the CEO of Neiman Marcus group, Geoffroy Van Raemdonk said that the group, which also owns the two Begdorf Goodmans, recorded a drop in single digit sales for the Christmas holidays compared to last year) and in some cases also quite confusing. This is the case of Macy’s which, despite the 2,300 expected layoffs, refused 5.8 billion dollars from Arkhouse Management and Brigade Capital Management, citing fears over the financing of the deal, as well as the company’s valuation, as justification for the refusal. The two potential partners (who would like to privatize the company) could however relaunch. In Italy, on the contrary, the formula continues to work: Rinascente has announced that it has exceeded the threshold of one billion euros in revenues in 2023 (+14% on 2019). Perhaps also thanks to the tourists who in 2023, in Milan alone, greatly exceeded 2019 levels with 8.5 million visitors.