During the course of my career as a consumer I have shopped in many stores: large stores, small stores, stores of such futuristic design that it was virtually impossible to decipher where the changing rooms were, and stores that were disguised as western shacks and seaside huts. But, during the course of my travels, I’m pretty sure that I’ve never perused the racks of an emporium that was inspired by a poem.
The uniqueness of the experience is almost enough to make me want to fly to Paris solely to visit Prada’s new concept store, the design of which is an homage to Guillaume Apollinaire’s poem, ‘Le Pont Mirabeau’.
Beneath Pont Mirabeau there flows the Seine
and so our loves.
How much must I again
recall that joy will ever follow pain?
The night hours strike and have their say.
The days will leave, but here I stay.
Hand in hand and resting face to face
through bridging arms
we watch the waters race,
the waves so weary in their endless chase.
The night hours strike and have their say.
The days will leave, but here I stay.
Love goes on and like the water’s flow
it goes away.
Life continues, slow
it seems, but hope is ever violent though.
The night hours strike and have their say.
The days will leave, but here I stay.
There pass the days and pass the weeks and then
that time is past
and love won’t come again.
Beneath Pont Mirabeau there flows the Seine.
While I’m not convinced that the store fully manages to evoke the spirit of lost love that is present in the poem, it definitely resembles the more structural aspects of the bridge itself (the first in the city to be built from metal). It’s a surreal design concept but, since Apollinaire is credited with coining the term “surrealism”, perhaps it’s a fitting tribute after all.
