Inside the Experience: Liberty Fabrics & Bridgerton
From “carriage-cam” and a ballroom dance floor to love notes and secrets, discover the story behind the immersive Bridgerton pop-up on Liberty’s Fourth Floor
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Inside the Experience: Liberty Fabrics & Bridgerton
From “carriage-cam” and a ballroom dance floor to love notes and secrets, discover the story behind the immersive Bridgerton pop-up on Liberty’s Fourth Floor
By: Maddi John
The doors to the Liberty Fabrics & Bridgerton pop-up are open, inviting you into a world of romance, whispers and scandal within Liberty’s Tudor walls. In celebration of the new fabric collection and the third season of the Netflix and Shondaland series, Liberty invites you to explore the world of Bridgerton in an entirely untold way: venture through our decadent rooms inspired by iconic moments of the series, and reimagined through the contemporary, romantic charm of the collection.
The pop-up is the perfect place to live out your Bridgerton fantasies: take a stroll through the ballroom and discover the dos and don’ts of fan etiquette, or capture your ‘Ton moment by snapping a photo in the elegant carriage, bedecked in fabrics from the collaborative fabrics collection. Or perhaps you’ll be brave enough to confess your love for a secret admirer and write a love letter in Lady Whistledown’s writing room.
Before you step inside the fantastical pop-up, we sat down with Lisa Clemenger from the Liberty visual merchandising team to find out how the team brought the world of Bridgerton to life within Liberty’s walls…
Can you tell us about the space, what can we expect to find in each room?
The idea was to create an immersive space of Bridgerton-inspired rooms, to experience the stories of the series, but with a fresh modern twist on the storytelling within.
We wanted to pull from the key destinations within 18th century life. There are five main "rooms": Lady Whistledown’s writing room, the carriage, ballroom, the modiste’s atelier and, finally, Gunter’s tea room. Each helps you to take part in the Bridgerton story.
The pop-up showcases our fabrics collaboration with Bridgerton, inspired by the third series and showing a modern, Liberty take on 18th century style.
What component of this space was your favourite to bring to life/ the most exciting to design and why?
We were excited about the build and the way it's designed as a freestanding “set build”, showing behind and in front of the camera. We love the mix of film set and ornate Regency walls.
We were also excited to see our baby grand piano arrive and to see some amazing wigs from the show itself!
What was the biggest challenge you faced when creating this space?
My personal style isn't very feminine, so I found that element of the brief quite tricky to balance.I wanted to emulate all the romance and beauty of the period but also give the space a fresh layer that we also see in Bridgerton. We thought a lot about how to marry these up to make the perfect space.
Can you tell us more about your design choices?
When designing within the Liberty store, we are always faced with very old and unusual floor layouts. We sliced up the space to give the visitors a journey through the rooms, at each stop we wanted to capture the customer’s imagination for the spaces and what happens within them.
As we are using one of our atrium departments we also considered how the rooms could feel more private, so that the experience itself is the main focus. To do this, we used soft Liberty velvet to clad the walls and raised up the atrium balustrade: enveloping the viewer.
What kind of atmosphere and experience were you aiming to create?
The creative concept team all dived into the world of the 18th century: its fashion architecture, transport, music and even the subtle communication through dance and fans, which you can read about in the experience. All of this has helped us tap into the immersive experience our customers know and love from Bridgerton.
We hope you enjoy it as much as we have enjoyed designing for you !
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