Aesop After Dark Bar, March Design, Melbourne

Boutique beauty brand Aesop wooed the crowds at Melbourne’s State of Design Festival with this cardboard installation that also served as a bar.

Set within Aesop’s Fitzroy headquarters with a bespoke installation by Melbourne designers March Studio, After Dark provided a forum for international designers including opening night keynotes Dunne & Raby and guests including Hernan Diaz Alonso, John Warwicker, Nipa Doshi, Tom Kovac, Mark Burry, Niels Jonkhans and Paul Minifie.

The installation also featured 180 Absolut vodka bottles with different medicinal herbs grown from seedling in each one, needless to say cocktails were provided too.

“This was an exciting project, and given the great synergy between Aesop, with its utilitarian brand aesthetic, and Absolut, whose own bottle shape was based on an early Swedish medicine bottle, it presented outstanding synergy”, Monica Hart, Absolut’s brand manager, said.