June 12, 2019

Text: Jesse Dorris

Jordana Maisie Design Studio Opts for Simplicity for FEIT’s New San Francisco Store

Ceiling lights in the new FEIT store are retrofitted with frosted glass tubes and T5 LED lamps, with custom Klus aluminum and LED linear lighting around the perimeter shelving for after-hours use. Photography by Carlos Chavarria.

Jordana Maisie Design Studio has spent the last five years envisioning a spatial identity for FEIT shoes that embodies the brand’s handcrafted aesthetic. “We have been committed to using a stripped-back, natural palette,” Maisie says, “to support the artisanal qualities of FEIT’s leather goods.”

Shelving is solid maple, finished with a water-based matte polyurethane seal. Photography by Carlos Chavarria. 

For its new San Francisco location, Maisie stuck to the palette, but this time trained focus on the brand’s distinctive packaging, which in its simplicity is artful enough to serve as décor. Speaking of art, the 860-square-foot-space—a former gallery—looks less like an old-school shoe store and more like an installation. JMDS demolished all the interior partitions and built grids of maple shelving, multiplied by vast expanses of mirror. “We use it to create a sense of expansion and dynamism within the interior,” Maisie says, “a boundary that the customer cannot decipher.”

Graphic planks of Baltic birch plywood form the store’s display tables. Photography by Carlos Chavarria.

Rows of footwear and care packaging, she says, “introduce a repetitive, rhythmic feature that focuses on the design experience of the product. And the perimeter shelving system provides an enhanced level of service, as stock is accessed without leaving the floor.” Talk about simplicity at its finest.

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The once-beige storefront was given a chic look with a coat of black paint. Photography by Carlos Chavarria.

The team removed the the original wood laminate flooring in the space’s front and the carpet in the back to showcase a concrete sub-floor, which they ground and sealed. Photography by Carlos Chavarria.

Custom displays utilize stainless-steel pipes connected seamlessly at the mirrored wall and tied to maple beams with the same kind of leather used for shoe production. Photography by Carlos Chavarria.

Read more: Cass Calder Smith Designs Sarah Jessica Parker’s Second Shoe Store in NYC

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