Aesop Hoboken

As one of the densest municipalities in the US, Hoboken is defined by both motion and gridlock—commuters hurrying to and from the station, strollers zigzagging down busy sidewalks, cars starting and stopping. Nature’s answer to this halting human cacophony lies just a few dozen miles to the north. The New Jersey Palisades are steep basalt cliffs that line the western shore of the Hudson River. Rising over 500 vertiginous feet in places, they tower over anyone standing below, as if hanging directly overhead—poised in mineral stillness, yet threatening to come down with the full weight of geological time. This awe-inspiring rock face gave our in-house architects one of the two starting points for this store’s design. The other came in the form of a few thousand defective boxes languishing in a nearby New Jersey warehouse. Each originally intended to house the aromatic Resurrection Duet—a pairing of the Hand Wash and Hand Balm of the same name—they had been set aside for disposal because of an unfortunate issue in the production process.   So instead of being discarded, the empty boxes—5,079 of them to be exact—were used as bricks to construct two walls within the long, narrow space which the store was to inhabit. The pale pink rectangular cuboids rest on a hidden supporting structure, arranged in a regimented grid, with fine gravity-defying gaps between them in lieu of mortar. The horizontal lines that they form recall the stacking of geological strata; their neat column-by-column alignment, the vertical striations of the Palisades. When they reach the top of the right-hand wall, the bricks do not stop: instead, they flip by 90 degrees and cover part of the ceiling—appearing to dangle somewhat precariously over the visitors below. Yet the prevailing impression is one of calm, and of contrast with the hubbub outside. Ultimately, the boxes may have failed in their original intent to house two specific products, but as consolation they get to showcase our entire range of formulations for the skin, hair, body and home. Those can be discovered and experienced via personal consultations at the store’s basins: our experts will gladly recommend the products best suited to your individual needs and preferences. On one side of the space, the cardboard-brick wall recesses slightly to form an alcove which houses a large, mysterious wooden box—the first of its kind to be installed worldwide. Another creation of our in-house design team, once opened it allows for hands-on exploration of our unorthodox Eaux de Parfum. Reusing discarded packaging to construct this store has not only kept material from going to waste: it has also kept the use of plasterboard to a minimum. Combined with the sourcing of vintage furniture from our existing collection, this light-touch approach makes this one of the least carbon-intensive Aesop stores worldwide. What’s more, because the structure mostly rests on the ground instead of hanging from the walls, it minimizes the impact on the shell of the space. This will make for cleaner dismantlement when the time inevitably comes for the store to close, hopefully many years—but realistically not eons—in the future.