Last month, we hosted ‘An Invitation To Play’ at Maison Assouline on Piccadilly, bringing together Sophie Howarth, Creative Retail Design and Experience Director at Coty UK; Sarah Boston, Global Director of Creative Concept and Innovation at Christian Louboutin; Tim Nash, Founder of Shop Drop Daily; and our own Gemma Ruse, for a conversation about the future of play in brand experience.

Much of the industry conversation around play gravitates toward the large-scale and spectacular, and with good reason. We love these spaces, the ones that stop you in your tracks, pull you inside and immerse you in a world. But the most memorable of them work because somewhere inside the spectacle, there is a small moment of genuine human connection.

Something that belongs to you, not the crowd.

Sophie Howarth was clear about where she sees the real opportunity. “I think there’s a huge opportunity in micro moments. We’re overwhelmed. We’re overstimulated. Retail is heavy. So there’s something beautiful about spaces that allow people to slow down. Using texture, temperature, sound.”

“In a world where we spend the majority of our waking hours staring at a screen, brands are offering something that a feed can’t. The shift in beauty retail over the last decade tells this story. Before, retail environments were built around maybe five or six dominant brands with these huge shop-in-shops that felt intimidating,” Sophie observed.

Spaces that once felt formal and gatekept have given way to something more exploratory. Chanel dismantled the traditional counter format entirely, putting everything on a flat surface and letting people reach for it themselves.

Glossier went further, treating the store as a space for experimentation. The action of play, as Sophie put it, doesn’t require a space to look playful. “Tom Ford is never going to look playful. It’s always going to look like Tom Ford. But the action of play has to exist. That’s what drives dwell time.”

It’s a distinction that shows up in the work. When Escentric Molecules approached StudioXAG for a launch in Liberty’s atrium space, the fragrance brand wanted to embed a version of play that stayed true to their spirit of scientific minimalism. Our team designed fragrance risers that concealed magnetic ferrofluid. Pick up a bottle and a magnetic liquid shifted beneath it, unexpectedly. “Those micro moments create memory because you become an active participant,” Gemma said. “That kind of subtle interaction can be just as powerful.”

The best brand experiences do both. “I think the future is balancing spectacle with intimacy,” Sophie said. “There are moments people absolutely have to share, but there are also moments that are private and personal. And both matter.” One doesn’t diminish the other.

Sarah Boston offered a thought that stayed with us after the conversation ended. She imagined a near future where brands begin creating spaces where your phone simply doesn’t work. “People are craving moments away from constant digital stimulation. I think brands might start gifting that feeling back to people.” Given that the screen is where we now experience almost everything, endlessly and flatly, there’s something quietly radical about a brand willing to offer the opposite.

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