您现在的位置: 首页     >    时装发布    >    Suzy Menkes专栏

Retail In The Time Of Revolution

作者:Suzy Menkes 编辑:张一杰 时间:2019年3月30日
内容来源:VOGUE时尚网  图片来源:VOGUE国际网站:英国

文章导读

Agitators from the ‘gilets jaunes’ demonstrations may have damaged Paris landmarks, but the Galeries Lafayette is bringing back hope with its new store

敬请期待中文版

The opening of the new Galeries Lafayette on the Champs-Elysées in Paris, where fellow retailers and luminaries from the creative fields admired the results of the three-year-long refurbishment and partied beside a large-scale model of the Eiffel Tower

Virgile Guinard

Was it a modern version of Marie Antoinette telling starving beggars demanding bread to eat cake instead? Or a brave attempt to show shoppers and visitors on a dilapidated Champs-Élysées that it was business as usual?

Wrought-iron gates were flung open on what the French call “the most beautiful street in the world”. Outside on the Champs-Élysées, a giant moon of light illuminated the new Galeries Lafayette department store – 6,500 square metres of shopping, eating and browsing.

“My family dreamed of opening a store on this famous street, but it was stopped by the war,” said the founder’s descendent and the current Executive Chairman, Philippe Houzé. The family-owned business first opened on rue La Fayette in 1895 before moving to its famous site on the boulevard Haussmann. But now, the space at number 60, most recently occupied by the Virgin Megastore, has had a three-year makeover, transforming into a broad space, almost like a village centre, with a wide staircase on one side and an image of the ‘Eiffel Tower’ straight ahead.

Philippe Houzé (second from right), the current Executive Chairman of the Galeries Lafayette, with his family (from left) – Guillaume Houzé, Christiane Houzé, and Nicolas Houzé

David Atlan

In the sorry circumstances of rioting on the Champs-Élysées, the Galeries Lafayette may find it fortuitous not to have this spacious vision at street level, as the nearby glass-fronted Apple store does, for example.
Yet looking outwards from a first-floor display area of fresh, new designer offerings, there is a sense of place on the majestic avenue, with its trees, cafés must-see shops, and parade of visitors, mostly from abroad.

The interior of the new Galeries Lafayette on the Champs-Elysées, remodelled by 'starchitect' Bart Ingels

Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti

Like most modernised shops, the focus is not only on clothing and iconic brands – although Chanel currently fills a space at the top, with other big names to come later. The best way to describe the layout is in the currently fashionable phrase, ‘a curated offering’, suggesting an artistic rendering of an area interconnected by spaces   providing not only shopping, but also food and an ever-changing variety of events. These ‘happenings’ include pop-ups with advice from 300 personal stylists, in total contrast to the old-school, grumpy staff enquiring, “Are you being served?”

‘Versatility’ is the buzzword in the current retail landscape. This new area, created by Danish architects Bjarke Ingels Group, feels like a store within an open-plan shopping area that seems like a safe haven from the drama outside.

Houzé, describing the new venture for the family business as “fulfilling its founder’s dream to be on the ‘Champs’ ninety years on”, was jubilant about this new chapter.

The gilets jaunes have attacked many famous Paris landmarks and notable boutiques and restaurants, including famed baker of pastel-coloured macaroons, Ladurée

@SuzyMenkesVogue

“Combining two iconic brands – Galeries Lafayette and Champs-Elysees – will also help to promote a certain French ‘art de vivre’ and contribute to the revival of this world-famous avenue,” the executive said.

A generous number of fellow retailers, not just the usual celebrities, jostled in the ‘town hall’. Among those offering good wishes to the Houzé family were Pietro Beccari, Chairman and CEO of Christian Dior Couture; Geoffroy de La Boudonnaye, CEO of Chloé; Michael Burke, CEO of Louis Vuitton; Adrian Joffe, co-founder and CEO of Dover Street Market; and celebrity fashion creatives including Pierre Hardy of Hermès, Michele Lamy of Rick Owens, and star fashion editor, Carine Roitfeld.



And yet, for all the celebration, the Champs-Elysées is currently in a sorry state, with everything it stands for – elegance, glamour and French grandeur – battered by the clashes with the gilets jaunes, whose angry presence has become a weekend ritual. Saturdays – that great weekend shopping day – have become no-goes. And even on a weekday, the sight of broken windows, charred wooden panels protecting shopfronts and historic landmarks such as the restaurant Fouquet’s burnt and smashed are all sombre signs of revolution and rage.

Retailers and institutions on the Champs-Elysées and surrounding streets board up their windows in response to vandalism  by rogue elements of the 'gilets jaunes' protest movement

@SuzyMenkesVogue

Opposite Fouquet’s, Louis Vuitton saved its windows by erecting semi-permanent metal screens, and still has a line of shoppers waiting to get in, although Chinese and other high-spending clients are down in numbers.
Whether this nationwide uprising in France will fizzle out, as the government seems to hope, remains to be seen. But meanwhile, behind its vast iron door, Galeries Lafayette can only hope to keep its dream alive.

转载声明

本内容系VOGUE时尚网原创或经官方授权编译转载,严禁以任何形式或方法转载或使用,违者追究法律责任。

将本文分享到

你可能还会喜欢

更多相关网站内容

关注官方微信
VOGUE VIP专享
开启互动之旅

将文章:Retail In The Time Of Revolution
喜欢到个人空间我的喜欢中。

喜欢理由:

喜欢成功

经验: +2 , 金币 +2

您的喜欢已完成,如您需要查看或者管理喜欢列表,
请点击"个人空间" "喜欢"

已经喜欢

 

您的喜欢已完成,如您需要查看或者管理喜欢列表,
请点击"个人空间" "喜欢"