Malmaison by The Hour Glass at Knightsbridge: Most Beautiful Store In The World?

Posted by Peter Chong from his blog site” Watchscapes: High Resolution Photography by Peter Chong”

Malmaison by The Hour Glass in Knightsbridge stands as one of the most beautiful stores purveying luxury in the world. A brainchild of Michael Tay, this store is a treasure house to showcase luxury. Not satisfied with just offering the world’s best watches, Malmaison now also offers a beautiful line of menswear, luxury perfumes and jewellery.

I undertook this little project as part of the Leica S2 review, and spent a happy afternoon with my friend Christopher Lee photographing the store.Covering a total of approx 6,000 sq ft, the entire ground floor is dedicated to the usual high end watches carried by The Hour Glass, but also a little corner of gentlemen worldly goods…like suits from Rubinacci, shoes by Corthay, and many other interesting treasures. But upstairs, we find a small book nook, carrying titles from TeNeuss and is the only retail outlet in the world to carry my “Pour le Merite Collection” title.

Click on the image for a 1920 wide image.Looking around, the general view of the upstairs

Another view

And an interesting experiment…a 6 panel stitch of the Summarit 35 each done in portrait orientation, covering approximately the same field of view as a single shot with the same Summarit 35 in landscape mode. First the stitched photograph

Single shot

My conclusion, if it is not for a gigantic print, I rather prefer the single shot…so no need for all the trouble to stitch. Perhaps for super large prints, I do mean really big print, as the regular S2 file is some 36 Mpixels is good enough for very large prints. A0 is certainly exhibition quality, larger possible at larger viewing distances.