Take a Look Inside Palace Skateboard's First Mainland China Flagship Store in Shanghai

Summary

• Palace Skateboards opens its first standalone store in mainland China on May 23, located within Shanghai’s historic Zhangyuan complex in Jing’an District
• The store’s design draws from classical Chinese garden architecture, continuing Palace’s approach of tailoring each location to its surrounding cultural context
• The opening is accompanied by a Shanghai-exclusive collection featuring “Shang-Hi” branding, a Chinese zodiac rabbit mascot, and graphics referencing the city’s iconic Oriental Pearl Tower

Palace Skateboards has always grown on its own terms. Since Lev Tanju and Gareth Skewis founded the brand in 2009 out of London’s skate scene, every major move has felt less like a calculated expansion and more like a natural extension of the culture Palace was already embedded in. The Shanghai store, opening May 23 inside the restored Zhangyuan complex in Jing’an District, is the latest proof of that instinct. It’s Palace’s first standalone location in mainland China, and by any measure, it’s the brand’s most architecturally ambitious retail statement yet.

To appreciate what the Shanghai store represents, it helps to trace how Palace has approached retail from the beginning. The brand’s first permanent London outpost, opened in Soho after years of drops that ran through its online store and a handful of stockists, established a blueprint: a space that felt like an extension of the crew rather than a conventional shop floor. That philosophy carried into New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and its Korean locations in Apgujeong and Hongdae. Each store absorbed something from its surroundings without diluting what made Palace recognizable. Shanghai continues that pattern, but raises the stakes considerably.

Zhangyuan is not an accidental choice of location. One of Shanghai’s most storied heritage complexes, the site dates back to the late Qing dynasty and has been recently restored to preserve its original architectural character. Palace’s decision to plant its Tri-ferg inside a space of that historical weight signals something deliberate about how the brand wants to be read in China. This isn’t a brand parachuting into a market. It’s a brand that did its homework. The three-dimensional mirrored Tri-ferg, angled downward at the entrance to greet visitors, sits against the preserved historic façade in a way that feels considered rather than imposed.

The interior design carries that same sensitivity. Stone tiles and limestone ground the space in materiality, while mirrored surfaces and accents of gold and red offer subtle nods to Chinese cultural tradition without tipping into pastiche. A pavilion-inspired structure anchors the centre of the store, echoing classical garden architecture. On the terrace, a pond-like feature incorporates a penjing tree island alongside the Palace cherub, a pairing that unites the brand’s irreverent identity with genuine respect for the architectural vocabulary of the space it occupies. For a brand that began life shooting skate videos under London bridges, it’s a remarkable evolution in spatial thinking.

The Shanghai-exclusive collection reinforces that reading. “Shang-Hi” branding appears across a biker jacket, sports jersey, hoodies, T-shirts, and accessories, accompanied by a rabbit mascot drawn from the Chinese zodiac and graphics paying homage to Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl Tower. The waving Tri-ferg hand, a recurring motif across Palace’s recent output, threads the collection back to the brand’s core while the city-specific references make clear that this isn’t shelf product pulled from the main line. It was made for this opening, for this city, for this moment.

That attention to context is what separates Palace’s retail expansion from the generic global rollouts that have diluted so many of its contemporaries. The brand has now built stores across three continents without producing a single location that feels interchangeable with another. In an era when flagship stores often function as little more than branded backdrops for content creation, Palace continues to treat the physical store as a genuine creative statement.

Palace Skateboards Shanghai opens Saturday, May 23, where the Shanghai-exclusive collection will be available.

Palace Skateboards
Unit W1-1A, Zhangyuan
280 Maoming North Road, Jing’an District
Shanghai