Malin+Goetz
238 North Larchmont Boulevard
Los Angeles
Tel: 323.391.1884
Architect: Bernheimer Architecture

Upscale grooming boutique Malin+Goetz has just opened its first store on the West Coast. Located in LA’s cozy Larchmont Village, next to main street shops and traditional buildings, the modern store stands out, ironically, for its minimalism.

The “modern apothecary,” as the company describes itself, has a dark gray boxlike facade fronted by a single glass door that was created out of a former bay window. The store’s restrained logo sits over the entry.

Inside, New York architect Andrew Bernheimer riffs on the brand’s elegant, understated product packaging. He designed a narrow space highlighted by two complementary flanks. The left side has a white, floor-to-ceiling gridded shelf system that reads like a single piece of cabinetry, despite being made with eight units. The design, notes Bernheimer, is a loose reference to the street grid in the company’s hometown, New York, and to the designs of Piet Mondrian and Charlotte Perriand. The other wall is solid gray, etched with an etched grid of milled MDF that echoes the motif.

There is one cozy, rustic element to balance out all this minimalism: a long wood table that the owners found in an antique shop in upstate New York. It is an apothecary, after all.