Not only will the store have the current season’s options but customers also may order from the next season’s collection and browse past collections to have pieces revived in custom colors, working with personal shoppers or, in some cases, the founders themselves. Appointments also may be made at a client’s home or office.

“We wanted to throw away all of those preconceptions and say: ‘What would be the dream scenario for a woman buying a dress?’ ” Mr. O’Regan said.

Robert Burke, whose New York-based company has consulted on retail strategies for industry players including Ralph Lauren, Chloé and Bulgari, has seen such thinking emerge in recent years. Even the larger retailers, he said, “are looking at just how many flagships or large stores they really need. That format worked for decades and decades. With the growth of online, it doesn’t seem to be working. Bigger isn’t better, necessarily. More focused is better, I think. And more intimate and more personal.”

The distinction, he added, was between the old idea of department stores and the emerging model of the “apartment store.”

Technically speaking, the store-as-home — or hub — is nothing new. Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridges in London, once decreed that “a store should be a social center,” and put an ice rink and a shooting range in his. But after several years of chilly, gallery-like shop design, a homey feeling is again becoming dominant.

MatchesFashion.com, the London-based retailer, began as a single bricks-and-mortar store in Wimbledon Village (called simply Matches). But while business from its (now three) stores has been dwarfed by its global e-commerce, as its rechristening as MatchesFashion.com suggests, the company is continuing to invest in new stores. After a year of testing smaller, homier stores as part of a pop-up program called “In Residence,” it is scheduled to open a new permanent space (the company prefers not to call it a “store”) at No. 5 Carlos Place in Mayfair in the spring.