Hair salon Pact + LIM and nail parlour Kiyone + LIM lead the pack by joining a destination emporium.

The DivergentsFrom left: Pact + LIM stylist Chie Ebina, Kiyone + LIM manager Natsumi Iwamuro, Kiyone + LIM nail artist Yuko Hane, Pact + LIM manager Yusuke So and Less Is More director Tan Eng Chong

Creative communes are all the rage in the fashion, food, design and art worlds. After all, there’s security in numbers and it’s easy to see the consumer appeal of a one-stop destination where you can eat, browse and buy. The one industry that doesn’t seem so keen on jumping into this melting pot of collaborators: beauty services. It’s obvious why: consumers of beauty services demand a private setting – who really wants to get their hair done in the middle of a store, eyed by curious onlookers shopping for clothes?

But this hasn’t fazed hair salon Pact + LIM and nail parlour Kiyone + LIM, both by the Less Is More (LIM) group. And both are part of minimalist emporium Pact (#02-14/23 Orchard Central), which is also home to other home-grown brands like furniture store Fred Lives Here, menswear label Sifr, jewellery brand Killari and Japanese fusion restaurant Kilo.

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Kiyone + LIM’s nail parlour was designed to resemble the comfort and intimacy of a home.

Tan Eng Chong, director of Less Is More, explains that the decision to join Pact was based on what he felt to be a shared commitment to quality. He says: “We thought it would be a good idea for brands with a similar vision and feel to band together and share a space. This way, we get more traffic from mutual customers and it’s also a good way to reduce operating costs.”

The Divergents 2Outside, Pact + LIM’s hair salon has partitions to ensure privacy. Inside (below), it’s the opposite – an open concept.

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In spite of Pact’s open-concept layout, LIM manages to keep things cosy and private for its clients with the clever use of partitions. In stylish nooks sheltered from prying eyes, customers can get customised Japanese-style nail art at Kiyone + LIM and haircuts with a distinctive Japanese aesthetic at Pact + LIM.

Tan believes that an emporium is a great way for smaller service-oriented beauty businesses to get their foot in the door. He adds: “And, from the consumer’s point of view, a destination emporium is very convenient for a busy society like Singapore’s.”

Photography Frenchescar Lim & Zaphs Zhang Art Direction Diane Ng Makeup Larry Yeo, using Nars

This is adapted from the article The Divergents, published in Female January 2015.