Creative entrepreneur Monica Navarro and spatial designer and artist Adi Goodrich have collaborated on a new storefront in LA’s Atwater Village called Dreams — a place where reality meets fantasy.

Inspired by dreams and the surrealist art movement, the store aims to unlock the door of an unconscious mind through an inventive and experimental shopping experience that blurs the lines between real and unreal, this world and another.

Inspired by surrealist imagery, Adi dug into the notion of daydreams — what it feels like to doze off into the warm and golden oblivion, if only for a moment. In designing the space, a cloud-like anchor was tethered to the feeling of light, an ethereal atmosphere.

Upon entry, narratives unfold like layers of a cakey time machine. The ceiling is cream with a dimensional monochromatic mural of motifs that tip a hat to Monica’s past lives — an egg for Wine + Eggs, florals and leaves for her ongoing collaboration with florist Yasmine, and a knot to symbolize the rewarding struggles of entrepreneurship. Tiled with a Japanese sage-coloured mosaic, an archway was designed, transforming the space from a long highway-like layout to an intentional space with dimensions and textures shape-shifting throughout.

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Using colour to evoke a feeling of comfort, Adi bathed the first half of the store in warm hues of peaches and terracotta. At the back of the space, a large blue rock marks the space passing through green and yellow zones before ending up in an intimate, almost spiritual, evenly lit space enveloped in blue. The ceiling features a custom illuminated sky drop panels with printed plexiglass.

Monica and her Dreams team imagined the store to have various ‘departments’ — home, apothecary, books, children, apparel, and accessories. The design of the interior complements each offering in an immersive way, creating an experience for customers as they interact with the store.

A custom cash wrap was designed with a centring, full-circle energy. Placed at the front of the store, it’s the beginning and end of every experience at Dreams. With that in mind, Adi designed a soffit to follow suit with the footprint of the counter and created custom lighting in matching cherrywood, connecting all the dots.

For the visual identity of the store, Adi and Monica partnered with graphic designer Elana Schlenker, an inventive collaborator who was able to take the branding to an unexpected place. In tandem with the graphic assets created, Elana and her collaborator Élise Rigollet engaged artist Julia Dufossé to further evoke the surrealist atmosphere of the store through illustrations that serve as peepholes into another world.

[Images courtesy of Monica Navarro and Adi Goodrich. Photography by Ye Rin Mok.]