Love is ALL

Luxury showcases

by Alessandra Cenna

MAD Paris

from April 10 to October 13, 2024

THE BIRTH OF DEPARTMENT STORES

Fashion, design, toys, advertising 1852-1925

Les Grands Magasins Dufayel, 1895-1900, Poster, lithograph © Les Arts Décoratifs

Jean-Gabriel Domergue (1889-1962)

— Galeries Lafayette. National loan, 1920 Poster, lithograph

The Museum of Decorative Arts devotes a vast exhibition to the birth of Parisian department stores, temples of consumption during the Second Empire.

Le Bon Marché, Les Grands Magasins du Louvre, Le Printemps, La Samaritaine, Les Galeries Lafayette, the department stores bear witness, from the 1850s, to the transformation of an era. Thanks to the policy of Napoleon III to modernize France, the urban changes of Baron Haussmann, the development of the railway and transport, we are witnessing an immense evolution of commerce with the rise of the bourgeois class, the main clientele of the great stores.

The exhibition traces the history of these cult addresses, with the opening of Le Bon Marché in 1852. In 1925, the Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts included a pavilion for each store to show its furniture collections. More than 700 works, toys, posters, clothing, objects, especially dedicated to women, are presented in the aisles of the Museum. du Musée.

LE BON MARCHE Handbag and its box, 1910-1919 Shaped silk taffeta, printed on chain, gold metal and silk satin © Les Arts Décoratifs / Christophe Dellière

Jules Jean Chéret (1836-1932) — Aux Buttes Chaumont, 1888 Poster, lithograph © Les Arts Décoratifs / Christophe Dellière

“Shopping” becomes a real bourgeois distraction, like going to the theater or the café, a new possibility of going out for the Parisian, an iconic figure of this era.

She was able to touch the merchandise, try on the clothes and be free to move around. The mechanization of production caused the democratization of fashion, with the invention of sales and mail order sales.

Products are sold by season with the launch of so-called “seasonal” items such as whites or gloves. Prices are set, no longer at the head of the customer, as in the shops of the past, and are therefore more attractive for the bourgeois classes and their purchasing power.

The child king becomes the new target of these department stores which understand the importance of dressing them differently from adults and designing toys and optical games for their pleasure to challenge their development.

Emile Zola is inspired by Aristide and Marguerite Boucicaut, founders of Bon Marché; for his preparatory notebooks for writing his famous “Au Bonheur des Dames”.

In partnership with the Museum of Decorative Arts, the theme of department stores will also be presented at the heart of a second exhibition, at the Cité de l’architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris, from October 16, 2024 to March 16, 2025.

A story that always generates a lot of ink

and meters of fabric to attract shopping fans..

Anonymous Two-piece dress, 1860-1865 Silk faille and taffeta

Leonetto Cappiello (1875-1942) — At the Louvre. Toys and gifts, 1922 Poster, lithograph © Les Arts Décoratifs / Jean Tholance