Please Do Not Enter

We are truly amazed by what in our eyes is one of the most inspiring retail concepts of late, which opened its doors in Los Angeles in April of this year. The store named Please Do Not Enter is a one-of-a-kind progressive men’s luxury retail and exhibition space in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles, offering an eclectic array of exclusive, carefully selected and timeless contemporary goods. From design to art and fashion, each piece has an unheard-of story that the founders, Nicolas Libert and Emmanuel Renoird, are longing to share with its visitors. From a vision, we totally agree with, moving away from hype brands and temporal trends, Please Do Not Enter offers a genuinely subjective collection, an as they call it themselves: ode to modern life. Pleasing the eye goes hand in hand with timeless quality and functionality, hybridizing the traditional gallery concept of tight curation with a retail space urging everyone to enter despite its name telling the opposite.

In a conversation with T Magazine Libert and Renoird state they moved to L.A. only two years ago. “We saw all the architecture and the diverse crowd downtown and we felt that something exciting was happening, we wanted to create a new project and decided to gather all the things we love and live with ourselves in one place.” Please Do Not Enter is located in an roomy space on the 12th floor of the 1921 Pacific Mutual Building, a beautiful Beaux-Arts premises across from Pershing Square.

We wanted to avoid the traditional retail model of the ground-floor shop, but we also didn’t want to create a classic white cube gallery. We decided to call our space Please Do Not Enter because we love the idea of a private collection we share only with beloved friends. As soon as you hear the warning implicit in the name, you want to know what it is and what you will find there. Naming a company with such an expression automatically provokes questions and it opens doors!

Some of the splendidly curated goods Please Do Not Enter offers are sculpture and objects by artists Arik Levy and Guillaume Bardet, furniture by Elise Gabriel and Valentin Loellmann and the tremendous leather products by GERTRUD & GEORGE which we love and will elaborately write about in the near future. Other items one finds in Please Do Not Enter are headphones by Aedle, lovely perfume by Maison Francis Kurkdjian, photographs by Grégoire Cheneau, stationery from Japan’s Ito Bindery and beautiful, but somewhat creepy toys from the Danish brand Lucky Boy Sunday: all beautifully displayed in a setting designed by Renoird with elements that clearly echo the building’s architecture. We are highly inspired by Libert and Renoird’s approach and curation!

Photography by Elizabeth Daniels.

Please Do Not Enter is open seven days a week by appointment, located at W. Sixth Street, Suite 1229, Los Angeles.
For more information see here