WORDS Garreth van Niekerk PHOTOS Sarah de Pina/Courtesy of Arrange Studio
Designed by Roxanne Ferreira, the Glow Theory store at Joburg’s 44 Stanley is as much a must-visit for those who admire sleek, contemporary interior design as it is an essential shopping destination for SA’s growing legion of fans of Korean beauty products.
Korean beauty – AKA K-Beauty – products have been taking over the planet in the past decade. Focused on skincare rather than on makeup, K-beauty combines innovative formulas and scientifically tested ingredients to create personally curated, multistep skincare routines. Add playful packaging and, in many cases, affordable pricing, and it’s no wonder that, in 2019, the worldwide market for K-beauty products clocked in at a staggering $10-billion (about R158-billion). Korean brands such as Laneige, Dr.Jart+ and Innisfree have also helped launch entirely new beauty product categories, including sheet masks, skin essences and BB creams.
In South Africa, multibrand K-beauty retailer Glow Theory was launched in 2017, and has been so successful, it’s become something of a cult favourite and leader in the K-beauty space locally. So it’s no wonder that, late in 2021, the brand branched out into a brick-and-mortar space at 44 Stanley in Johannesburg – and its first store is a delightful pastel dream brought to life by young interior and product designer Roxanne Ferreira of Arrange Studio.
No stranger to retail design, with her previous work for brands such as Freedom of Movement also bringing much-needed life into the shopping landscape, this time around Roxanne aimed to create “an environment that feels like being in a candy store, and something fresh and vibrant”, she says. “I wanted the colours to feel reminiscent of warm, glowy skin in different tones. So I looked at the brand’s main colour – pink – and used it as the base, then built around it by introducing lighter and darker tones in the same colour family.”
Like K-beauty, which makes use of myriad naturally derived ingredients, the Glow Theory space needed to feel playful and inviting; a focus on materials that reference nature was key too. “Natural materials also played a role,” says Roxanne, “with the use of plywood adding warmth and texture.” Finally, she explains, the Glow Theory brand’s “secondary cobalt-blue colour was used sparingly throughout as an accent or where impact was needed, for example in the signage”.
In addition to her interiors, Roxanne’s product designs have also recently got the local design world’s attention in a major way. Her debut product, the Paradise Light, was one of 2021’s standout pieces – it was showcased in VISI 116 (and in this story, here), and features proudly in the new Glow Theory store alongside a few more custom pieces, including a bench design created in collaboration with Krafted Design Studio. In short, Roxanne’s work is putting her own aesthetic and that of the brands she’s partnering with firmly on our radar.
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