Photographer: Yevhenii Avramenko

Ruslan Baginskiy is a famous Ukrainian milliner whose headwear brand is known all over the world. The Baginskiy Showroom is located in Kyiv, Ukraine, at 33 Pushkinska Street in a historical building built 1895-1896. It was important to undertake a renovation of the store, and Ruslan approached the RinaLovko studio for the project.

Concept

Whilst Ruslan Baginskiy's team is originally from Lviv, the cultural capital of western Ukraine, they live and work in Kyiv, and consider Paris their “third” home. This formed the starting point of the project for the client - to combine the atmosphere of these amazing cities and to transfer it to the project space. Thus, as is typical in European cities, it was decided to create a showroom in the style of a designer residential apartment.

For this purpose Rina Lovko, went to Lviv to be inspired by the old streets and beautiful premises. On this trip in Lviv it became clear what colors, tones and details would saturate the showroom. Vintage furniture was also found for the project, which further complements the idea of bringing the visitor to an old European city.

Design

To the left of the entrance hall is the kitchen, storage and meeting room. This room is designed for comfortable communication between VIP-clients and Ruslan's team. In the center of the room attention is drawn to a custom-made elegant wooden chandelier «Spirits» by Vasya Grublyak. Along the wall there is a console and shelf for accessories and goods from seasonal collections.
A little further on, we have the main room where the visual emphasis is on the central mirror. The mirror makes the room bigger and allows customers to see themselves in full height while trying on and choosing headwear. It reflects the cubes and shelves that fill the space of the showroom.

The cubes are custom-made and decorated with lime plaster, visually reminiscent of Lviv houses covered with limestone. Among the cubes, one can find marble blocks that Rina and Ruslan found in a marble retail warehouse. We also painted the shelves and walls in ash tint, which are then emphasized by warm lighting. In order to make a unique texture, we added crumbs of quartz to the paint.

A central focus in our design is the display table with a textured surface, on which the product stands out. When we designed the project we calculated the number of hats and the surface area required for which to make compositions from collections.

The room we worked with was filled with history. To retain the old time we kept the existing molding and invited an artist to enhance its features by drawing the depth of the patterns’ shadows and producing a worn-out effect. The inherited parquet floor was restored and covered with a transparent lacquer. We emphasized the arched windows with smoothing corners as it was done in the past.

In addition, we paid great attention to the furniture in the showroom: black armchairs made by Lviv carpenters according to old drawings, a vintage brass mirror and chest of drawers brought from Switzerland, and a bench in the hallway found at a flea market in France.