LONDON — Dia Creative Communications, the parent company of Tube, certainly one of Shanghai’s most outstanding fashion showrooms, ventured into experiential retail last week with the opening of Dia Underground on the basement level of Xintiandi Style II, a stylish shopping center in downtown Shanghai.

Taking up the space of a former upscale supermarket, the shop has about 24,750 square feet of retail space featuring greater than 30 designer brands represented by Tube. It would be the first-ever stand-alone retail space for many of those labels.

Notable tenants include Marrknull, certainly one of this 12 months’s LVMH Prize semifinalists; Shie Lyu, who’s launching a collaboration with Stella McCartney; Mark Gong; Xu Zhi; Vii Victor X Wang; Jacques Wei; PH5; Office H, and Yvmin.

Mark Wang, cofounder of Marrknull, said Dia Underground provides the brand “with a chance to experiment directly with consumers and offers a recent way of occupied with brand development” and he “wants people to experience our take of up to date Chinese culture in a straightforward and clean space that permits everyone’s attention on our products.”

For Zewei Hong, cofounder of Office H, a brand for many who enjoy a 9-to-5 lifestyle as much as the nice outdoors, Dia Underground “provides an important off-line venue for consumers to try on our products, which is able to help us reach more customers and markets in the long run. Our products are so way more than good-looking photos on shopping web sites.”

Victor Wang, founding father of Vii Victor X Wang, said his space evolves across the V shape, which may be seen from the ground to the partitions, extending to sofas, fitting rooms, and even on glass. Product-wise, he’s offering popular styles in exclusive colorways and progressive materials.

Zemira Xu, cofounder of Tube, called Dia Underground “an organic evolution” of its showroom business, which has helped local designer brands like Shushu/Tong, Calvin Luo, Caroline Hu, and Ming Ma reach dozens of fashion boutiques across China since 2015.

“It goals to offer an open platform for independent designer brands and inventive partners from different fields and unique cultural backgrounds to grow together and express their voices freely,” added Xu, who used to go communications at 10 Corso Como Shanghai, which was closed in 2019, before launching Dia.

The inside was done by Sò Studio, a Shanghai-based emerging spatial design office founded by Mengjie Liu and Yifan Wu that has worked on a dozen trendy retail and restaurant projects.

Xu said Dia Underground desires to create “a relaxed and distance-free retail atmosphere with specially chosen outdoor tiles to mimic the on a regular basis street-side store’s experience. While the lighting may be switched between day and night scenes to create a more vigorous and immersive retail space for consumers who care about fashion, as much as design and lifestyle.”

The space was first teased throughout the fall 2023 edition of Shanghai Fashion Week, where buyers and the press got here and met with the designers who’re selling via Tube Showroom.

Xu noted that while the space to this point only caters to brands which might be working with Tube, the goal is to welcome more designer labels to hitch Dia Underground and utilize the space provided to inform the brand’s story to consumers.