Three Studios Interprets Rococo Masterpiece for Ayla Boutique in Lebanon
Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s 1767 “The Swing” is a Rococo masterpiece that not only pushed the boundaries of propriety but, some 250 years later, continues to inspire designers like Nabil Dbouk and Ali Basma of the Lebanese firm Three Studios. The pair looked back to the painting—and to a passion for pastels in the early 20th century—for the interiors of Ayla, a women and children’s apparel store in Tyre, a seaside city in southern Lebanon.
Clothing swings on copper pipe fixtures, which shine amid marble upstands for accessories. Arched openings mark dressing rooms and service areas. Both the ground floor and upstairs children’s area are visible through the double-height glass façade of white tile leading into pale green walls, which, notes Dbouk, “presents the highlight of the project through creating a transition in scale, color, and material clearly defining the main zones of the store.”
That highlight she mentioned? A mannequin on a swing of her own—here custom made of square steel pipes with a seat of laser-cut steel plate with chamfered corners.
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