Look down as you step into this booth and the floor says YOU LOOK GOOD.
Black type on white tile, with blush and black borders running down either side. It is the only sentence anywhere in the booth, and it reaches you at the exact second you are deciding whether to do this.
In a jewelry store, that line is doing two jobs at once.
The only mirror that hands something back
Our booth opened this month inside Uncommon James at 1011 South Congress, in Music Lane, in Austin. Everything in these photos is from the opening.
A jewelry store is a building full of mirrors. Every counter has one. Every fitting has one. People pick a piece up, hold it against themselves, turn slightly, and ask themselves the same thing every time: does this look right on me.
Every mirror in that room answers, and then takes the answer back the moment you walk away.
Our booth is the only one that does not. You put the necklace on, you get in, you pull the curtain, and ninety seconds later you are holding a photograph of yourself wearing it. That is a different transaction from a mirror, and it is a considerably better one if you are the shop.
It is also the reason the floor tile works. In a room where everybody is already privately assessing their own reflection, a machine that opens with YOU LOOK GOOD is not a slogan. It is answering the question people came in with.
What we built
The frame is gold, with an illuminated PHOTOBOOTH marquee running across the header in black on white. Warm orange grain on the upper side panel carrying the UJ mark in white, walnut below it.
The curtain is dusty rose velvet on metal grommet rings, and the interior carries the same tone, so there is no color break when you step through. The print tray is set into walnut behind a brass bezel. The strips are black and white with UNCOMMON JAMES running vertically up the margin.
Underneath is our Classic booth, on levelling feet, customized to the room rather than pulled off a shelf.
An armadillo with a saddle
Now the roof.
Sitting on top of our booth is a mirrored disco armadillo wearing a small leather saddle, provided by Uncommon James. A mirrored disco cactus in a concrete pot sits next to it. Three more disco cacti stand on the floor beside the cabinet. The flank panel carries an Austin skyline in blush pink and a photograph of hill country scrub.
None of that is generic. You could not ship this booth to Nashville.
Uncommon James is a brand with stores in several cities, and the Austin shop opened with pieces made only for Austin: a cowboy boot pendant, a football charm, hats with ATX on them. The booth is running the same logic. It is not branded to the company, it is built for the address.
Our booth for Byredo went the other direction earlier this month, two cabinets in two cities finished identically on purpose, and that was the right answer for what it was doing. This is the opposite instinct and it is equally correct, because a shop that will sit on South Congress for years is not a touring object. It has one neighborhood, and it should look like it knows that.
Compare it with Hublot in Chicago, where the brief ran the other way and the booth carried one lit word and nothing else. Both rooms got what they needed. A watch boutique wants the object to say very little. A jewelry shop on South Congress with disco cacti in it can carry a decorated floor and a skyline, and would look underdressed without them.
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One night, then the next thousand afternoons
Something worth naming about these photos: they are from a party.
That is a compressed, crowded, loud hour with a queue, people holding drinks, three at a time behind the curtain, and everybody already photographing everything. A booth has to survive that, and specifically it has to keep printing while a line forms.
But the party is one evening, and our booth is not leaving. It is a Venue Placement, installed long term with maintenance handled by us, so nobody behind the counter has to think about paper, ribbon or a jammed print.
So it has two audiences that behave nothing alike. There is opening night, and then there is a Tuesday in February when two people wander in off South Congress, try on a couple of things, notice a lit marquee in the corner and decide on the spot. Almost everything a booth earns, it earns on the Tuesdays. The launch is what teaches the room it is there.
If you want the mechanics of how that arrangement actually works, we wrote it up separately in how a long term booth works.
Where this sits
This is one of many booths in Austin we have installed. Another one in Austin worth checking out is Radio Rosewood on East 11th, which is a coffee shop in the morning and a cocktail bar at night.
On the retail side it belongs with our booths at Criminal Records in Atlanta, and with Printemps on Wall Street, which is the closest thing we have done to this inside a luxury retailer.
South Congress is the right kind of street for it. People go there on purpose, they walk the whole strip, and they are already in the mood to take a picture of something.
Want one in your store?
We design and build custom photo booths for the room they are going into and install them through our Venue Placement program, with maintenance handled by us. We also run brand activations nationwide.
If you sell something people try on in front of a mirror, tell us about the shop. Let’s make unforgettable memories together.
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