In the lead-up to the 15th anniversary of StudioXAG, we’ve been catching up with clients, collaborators and friends in our industry – some of the faces behind the boldest spaces and brand experiences in the world’s best shopping destinations.

Now, it’s time for us to turn the conversation around and look a little closer to home. In this edition of Faces Behind the Spaces, StudioXAG co-founders Gemma Ruse and Xavier Sheriff, take a look back at their top XAG moments and discuss what’s in store, not only for us, but the wider industry.

Favourite scent
Gemma: The smell after the rain
Xavier: Sea breeze

Favourite taste
Gemma: Pasta… or tomato
Xavier: Salt

Favourite texture
Gemma: Something squidgy – clay
Xavier: Really polished stone

Favourite sound
Gemma: That glug that a bottle makes
Xavier: Electric guitar

Favourite colour
Gemma: Vermillion
Xavier: Yellow

Xavier: Time to take a look back to where it all began as we celebrate 15 years of StudioXAG! We founded the studio shortly after graduating from Central Saint Martins. Gemma, why don’t you share a bit about our studio setup back then? How does it compare to our shiny new home?

Gemma: It was very different, as you remember. Didn’t we start in your parents’ garden in a shipping container?

Xavier: Let’s be honest, we started in our one-bedroom flat living room and occasionally used our friend’s gallery across the road. We moved into our studio in Whitechapel, which had no heating and so left promptly. We then went on to hire a shipping container and put it outside the garage of my parents’ house. We worked in that through the winter, using it as a spray booth, dipping teddy bears in latex. Basically, carrying on our Art Foundation, but into the professional world.

Gemma: So, a very different time back then.

Xavier: We worked job to job, worked long hours, 7 days a week – weekends and bank holidays weren’t a thing for us.

We never really knew exactly how we were going to do something before we did it. We just took the brief and ran with it, then installed it. It was unanimously successful, but it’s down to Gemma’s creativity and our collective work ethic that got us through that. Now, we’re 50 people, with many departments.

How would you describe this transformation over the 15 years, Gemma?

Gemma: A constant drive to do bigger, better, and bolder work has been what has motivated us to keep evolving what we do over the past 15 years. We have grown from doing one project back to back, the two of us designing, building and installing it, to now a team who do all of that and are specialists in any one part of that process.

We realised at some point in our evolution – moving studios a few times – that it wasn’t about space, it was about people and we needed to find people who were brilliant at all the things we needed. A massive focus for us is always amazing talent, ideally those even better than us. So we can guide them in a direction to deliver brilliant work to our clients.

That’s probably been the biggest transformation and we’re able to do so much more. It’s nice to reflect on that.

Xavier: There have been many memorable projects. Thinking back, what’s been your biggest WOW moment?

Gemma: Going to Korea in 2012 and designing a launch concept for Lotte World Mall, which was absolutely huge and was probably the first time that we really worked on a global scale with a massive project in an exciting way.

The most iconic project, for me, has to be the 20th anniversary of Christian Louboutin takeover in Selfridges in 2012, which is a really long time ago. But it holds a special place in my heart because we were working with Christian himself, we were making models of everything to show him in physical form to show him to put in the windows. We turned the project around in 5 weeks.

It was one of our most successful early projects, in the spot with the highest footfall in Europe and to do it for a brand that we love working with on a really big scale. It was a great project for us and gave us a lot more industry credibility.

Xavier: Talking of successful projects, are there any others that come to mind?

Gemma: I think of the Napapijri pop-up in Shoreditch as something that is measurably successful. We know off the back of the work we did with them to launch them in the UK they had an increase in brand visibility from 8% to 34% and that was something we could shout about.

Xavier: It was the first time we started talking about brand awareness as a real measure of success. It really represents a shift for us from more tactical projects to more strategic projects.

For me, aside from all of the brilliant creative studio projects, there is one project that stands out. We took over the windows and atrium of Liberty with their story, The Tree of Liberty. It was a magical, mystical tree that contained all of the jewels inside Liberty.

It was a challenge that was put on our table that looked pretty impossible that we absolutely nailed, and that’s what we do. We were commissioned to build a huge 3/4 of a tonne tree, which we hung in the atrium – an iconic heritage space – and took over all 10 windows, really bringing their vision to life.

We’ve continued to have a long-lasting relationship with the client, but most importantly the project is successful because it had such a wide reach and people from all walks of life were talking about it.

When we were observing the effects of it, it truly answered the brief of stopping people in their tracks to look at the beautiful windows. It made them dream, pulled them into the store, and then they were hit with this pure wow moment when they saw the huge tree hanging above their heads. Encouraging them to then explore the whole store top to bottom, floors 0 to five. and get a different angle and different view on it as they go through.

Gemma: Going into the store and seeing people literally stop in their tracks and say, “Wow,” was our measure of success on that project. And it truly did stop people. That was quite heartwarming to experience. And it’s not always possible to get that kind of real time feedback or emotional reaction.

Xavier: Back in 2021, we were commissioned to design the retail identity for a brand collaboration launch, between Cara Delevingne and Karl Lagerfeld. It was all about the friendship of those two iconic characters and the collection that was designed around it.

We designed and built this amazing, immersive retail environment, rolled out across very cool, super ambitious pop-ups, store takeovers and windows, incorporating digital interactive and gamification. It felt very all-encompassing and we really owned it from strategy through to retail identity, through to design and through to build. I feel like it was a real raving success, it landed with the customer and with the brand and was globally impactful.

Gemma: For me, the real success of that project was getting commissioned to design two flagship store concepts off the back of it – first for Karl Lagerfeld Jeans, a new brand that they were launching, and second to reimagine the flagship retail concept for the core Karl Lagerfeld brand – Their new ‘future legacy’ store concept just launched on Regent St. This showed us the trust that they had in our team and our creative ability to deliver something that would appeal to their future consumer. That felt like a really great moment.

Gemma: Outside of our own work, what’s stopped you in your tracks recently Xav?

Xavier: When I got off the Eurostar recently, after a trip to Paris, the Tracey Emin piece at St.

Pancras stopped me in my tracks. I know it’s six years old now, but I really love it and I think that the message is bang on and has stood the test of time. I also really like things at the moment that make you look up.

I was dropping our kids off at nursery this morning and someone was walking down the muse with their head completely buried in their phone, and I just thought – A, this is quite dangerous and B, come on, just look up. For me, I think that’s going to be one thing I’m going to be looking out for in 2025, is things that make me look up and it’s particularly poignant at the moment because you have all the Christmas displays above your head in the big shopping destinations. I love things that make you wonder and looking up is always a good thing to do. It makes you feel better and also you get to appreciate this whole level of architecture that I think in the contemporary 21st century world of smartphones we are not appreciating at the moment.

Gemma: That’s very optimistic, the idea of looking up not only from a physical standpoint but from a mental standpoint.

I saw Gentle Monster in Selfridges yesterday and they have an enormous animatronic, extremely lifelike human head – it must be a meter and a half or more tall – and it blinks and follows your movements. It followed me around for about five minutes and that really stopped me in my tracks.

Xavier: Looking to the future, Gemma, how do you see our industry evolving in another 15 years’ time?

Gemma: We’ve started to see more permanent retail proposals echo the experiential theatrics of the temporary pop-ups we’ve worked on over the last 15 years.

I see retail spaces evolving so that they’re not only a transactional space, but a lifestyle destination where you go for an experience and the purchase is almost a byproduct of the brilliant experience you’ve had.

Xavier: It’s interesting, isn’t it? You need to be ready to make people laugh as well as make them understand a brand or product.

Our industry is a very evolutionary thing and I don’t think that we ever really stand still. In the next 15 years, brands will become smarter with the ways they’re connecting with their consumers.

Ultimately, I don’t think we can deny that there will be less purchases made in real life and more purchases made online. The physical experience has to be valuable in a different way for the brand and for the customer. That’s already happening and I think in 15 years we may have just established some more language and an understanding of that.

Gemma: I think the world could look very different in 15 years time, especially with AI and the pace that technology is moving at, but I don’t think people will ever stop craving real experiences. I believe that the best way for brands to bring their stories to life is through those spaces and experiences where they can truly immerse people in the brand, put scent through the space, control the sound, put it out in a beautiful color and texture and take people on a journey away from reality.

Xavier: AI is definitely going to be a key driver, more so than the metaverse or Web3. There was a moment two years ago where people were claiming if your brand isn’t on board with the metaverse, then you’re dead, which just wasn’t true. However, AI is so powerful that we don’t know exactly what it’s going to deliver for brands. In 15 years, it feels very, very achievable that we will understand every customer that’s walking through the door. We have loads of data on them and AI is fast and smart enough to be able to tailor experiences for people.

We need to think about what they get – a smell or a taste or a product that’s relevant to them. By the time they’re at home, do they already have something on their doormat that is bespoke to them? What marketers always want to do is make you feel special and considered.

Gemma: That hyperpersonalisation is where AI will add a lot of value. It’s something that is just right for you because they know you and they know what you like already.

Xavier: I guess in some ways it might help them weed out the people that they’re not trying to sell to as well. But I think it’ll be interesting to see how that power drives the way that we communicate.

Gemma: I also believe that sustainability needs to be a driving force in the future of our industry.

Xavier: We have a target of becoming net zero by 2035, something that’s amongst one of our biggest ambitions.

Gemma: And we’re seeing a lot more circular products or products edging towards circular practices emerging.

Xavier: So we hope, but also feel, it will be completely necessary in 15 years for us and brands to be delivering circular, perhaps regenerative solutions for our industry and for the general product industry. There are smart solutions to doing high level creativity responsibly.

Gemma: In 15 years time, we will need to be working in quite a different way to the way that we’re working now as an industry.

We need to move away from this linear production of product and spaces, away from a linear take, make, use, discard approach to more circular approaches.

As an industry, we need to implement more sustainable strategies in terms of the way that we design and build spaces as well as the cycles of retail marketing on the whole. We need to look at the ways that we can reduce our footprint, exploring more sustainable materials of course and moving to more radical sustainable ways of working.

Xavier: Perhaps there’s even an opportunity for regenerative solutions which are again doing good in a regenerative way for communities, the planet and the earth.

Gemma: There’s so much scope for innovation in that space.

Xavier: We are going to find that there’s real wind behind our sails in the next few years as technology and AI evolves more rapidly than it has been in the last decade and a half.

Gemma: How do you see us evolving with that?

Xavier: For us, responsibility and sustainability are going to be at the core. We’re already improving day by day, using our own waste energy, heating our workshops with our own excess materials and fuel that’s reducing our waste cycle.

There’s loads of real, physical progress that’s happening. We’re trying to make a bigger impact in a wider sense. We’re making sure that when we’re specifying projects globally, we’re specifying the most sustainable, responsible solution, designing things that last longer, designing things that can be reused and can evolve. We’re accelerating in a steep curve in our ambition and trying to drive our clients to do the same.

We’re here to support our clients in delivering a vision that is both creatively and sustainably ambitious, crafting a better future for our industry.