
RIBA JOURNAL
1A EARL’S COURT SQUARE
By RIBA
May 2019
Designer Sophie Hicks’ flagship for Stockholm-based fashion brand Acne Studios in Seoul’s Gangnam district sits – gossamer and luminous – in a bed of wild strawberries, crowned with ductwork and lined with concrete. This industrial-ethereal contradiction reflects the area’s identity, as well as the contrast between Acne’s vocal aesthetic (the name of the label could refer to blemishes but is actually a cheeky acronym for the collective’s primary pursuit: Ambition to Create Novel Expressions) and the more retiring aspects of Swedish culture. ‘Sweden is a culture of light and air,’ Hicks writes, one that values ‘modesty and discretion’.
Inside, two floors of concrete poured in rough timber forms float amid – without touching – exterior polycarbonate walls through which daylight difuses onto freestanding steel garment displays. There is no decoration of any sort and no mechanical equipment, the ductwork that might have threaded the interior having been coiled atop the roof. The consonance of a handful of diverse materials – woodgrain-tattooed concrete surfaces and spiral stair, metal cash counter and displays, and glowing polycarbonate walls – vaporizes into an atmosphere of cool warmth. Hicks, with good reason, calls it ‘otherworldly’. — Shonquis Moreno

1A EARL’S COURT SQUARE
By RIBA
May 2019

SOPHIE HICKS CONCEALS “CONCRETE MONSTER”
By Alice Morby
Photography by Annabel Elston
September 2015

AD TOP 200 INFLUENCERS
June 2019

YOHJI YAMAMOTO FLAGSHIP STORE, PARIS
by Lee Eunjung, Photographs by Johannes Marburg

TRACKED SOPHIE HICKS
By Ned Beauman
Photographs by Julia Grassi
December 2018 / January 2019
ARCHITECT SOPHIE HICKS ON LIFE IN HER HIDDEN CONCRETE HAVEN IN KENSINGTON
by The Modern House
Summer 2023

SOPHIE HICKS
Words by Emily King
First published in 2013, reissued November 2025

SOPHIE HICKS DISCUSSES THE FASHION INDUSTRY AND HER CAREER IN ARCHITECTURE.
by Izzy Bilkus. Photographs by Adrian Gaut, Johannes Marburg, James Drew Turner and Annabel Elston.
Winter 2021

AZZEDINE ALAÏA
By Sophie Hicks
April 2018

SOPHIE HICKS – THE ALAÏA-CLAD STYLIST WHO REFITTED HERSELF AS AN ARCHITECT
By Emily King
Photographs by Andreas Larsson
Fall/Winter 09/10