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Harrolds launches the ‘Spring Art Fair’

The luxury retailer partners with Discordia Gallery to present a spectacular storefront reawakening on Collins Street’s Parisian end to usher in spring season of freedoms

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To mark Melbourne’s reopening in a marriage of fashion and artistry, Harrolds is collaborating with local tastemakers Elizabeth McInnes and Summer Masters behind Discordia Gallery.

After enduring the world’s longest lockdown, Harrolds is imploring Melburnians to emerge from their homes in safe and whimsical settings. The quintessential patterned black Harrolds Collins Street façade will be reborn as a rotating art gallery, swathed in a lilac overlay and adorned with three standout works from Discordia’s trove for the spring. Art will rotate every two weeks.

On Saturday October 30th, Parisian style café tables and chairs will welcome long-term Harrolds shoppers and fleeting visitors alike to sit, people watch, and ruminate over the ‘Art Fair’ window in all its glory. It’s a return to the cultural exhibitions and togetherness that this city has missed so dearly.

The quintessential patterned black Harrolds Collins Street façade will be reborn as a rotating art gallery

A Harrolds coffee cart will be pouring barista-made coffee and offering freshly made croissants for guests on reopening weekend as shoppers liaise with sales team members on the street should they desire. The Harrolds team continues to offer a swift click and collect service, as well as same-day delivery to metro Melburnians.

“I was inspired by the old days and channelled the Paris end of Collins Street, when going to the city was an outing. The way art and fashion collide, looks are curated to pieces and it goes beyond the transaction, it connects back to the cultural heart of the city and works to the fabric and soul of Melbourne,” Harrolds owner Mary Poulakis said.

Reconfigured to adapt a “nomadic model” for the lockdown part of 2021, Discordia has also been closed for far too long. The gallery is located in bricks and mortar at the Nicholas Building on Swanston Street, not far from Harrolds’ halls.

“Our gallery space remains dormant but present”, according to the Discordia duo Elizabeth McInnes and Summer Masters, who are also full of hope and the joy of possibility for a 2022 schedule of exhibitions.