Printemps, a French department store that has just opened its first New York Buitenpost in Lower Manhattan, wants to do what few stores of his peers have done lately in that area: staying in business.
The store on 1 Wall Street, about a five -minute walk from the New York Stock Exchange, is in a part of Manhattan that recently had a bad track record with luxury shopsemporiums. That is perhaps the reason why a marketing campaign emphasizes that it is ‘not a department store’.
The store of Saks Fifth Avenue in the Brookfield Place shopping center was open for a little more than two years before it was closed in 2019. A location in South Street Seaport of 10 Corso Como, the Milanese concept store loved for the selection of clothing, art, furniture and books, came and went even faster: it was closed in 2020, about 18 months after it opened.
The Printemps store in New York is a second arrival: a location in Denver lasted about two years after opening in the late 1980s. It comes at a time when department stores, once a foundation of the American shopping experience, also closed a fast clip throughout the country.
In February 2024, Macy announced that it would close around 150 locations for a period of three years (while it opened around 15 new locations of Bloomingdale’s, which also owns Macy’s). In December, Neiman Marcus, one of the most illustrious names in the country in the retail trade, was taken over by the company that also owns Saks Fifth Avenue. Shortly thereafter, announcements came that certain locations of Saks and Neiman Marcus closed.
Printemps-the French word for the spring jump these trends by offering New Yorkers and tourists a two-storey bazaar with Murano lighting fixtures, mosaic walls, spa-treatment pods, bars, marble and parquet floors, exhibitions of Archivische Haute Couture and Champagne.
By browsing the maze of the shops of corridors – filled with French goods such as Jacquemus Handbags, Avène Thermal Water Spray, Courrèges MiniRresses, Carel Mary Janes, Vintage Yves Saint Laurent Suits and Embryolisse Moisturizer – can feel like a decadent paasei junt.
“The French have a good taste, they know what beautiful is the level of sophistication,” said Jean-Marc Bellaiche, the global chief executive of Printemps, at a party for the opening of the store on Thursday evening.
About a quarter of the brands it carries is not sold elsewhere in the United States, he added. But the hospitality of the store will have a clear American taste: “Americans are better when it comes to saying,” Welcome, “Mr. Bellaiche said.” They are warmer. The French are a bit distant. “
The range of the store is a reason why he thinks it will succeed. Mr. Bellaiche did not consider opening it in another part of New York, he said.
Together with the actress Parker Posey, the actress Katie Holmes was one of the most striking guests in the party. Mrs. Holmes, 46, said she thought Printemps had the allure to become a store destination. “It has this museum quality,” she said. “It feels like something to do; it’s nicer than anything.”
Coco Baudelle, 35, a filmmaker in Manhattan who worked as a teenager in a department store, described Printemps more inviting than his colleagues. “It did not have the neon bright lights that you have brought into the mentality that you are there for shopping and receive the sales pitch,” she said, called the space “warm”.
Mrs. Baudelle added that places such as the nearby Kantoorentoren were known as the WSA building Nieuw Buzz to the financial district. “There are so many brands and young people,” she said about the building, where Mrs. Baudelle was just before the Printemps party. “It’s relevant and exciting.”
Some have characterized PrintMps as the filling of a gap that exists in the New York retail landscape since the closure of Barneys New York in 2020. Kelly Bensimon, 56, a former model and star of “The Real Housewives of New York City,” said as much on the party, as publications like Air Mail op social media.
Printemps, founded in Paris in 1865 and has 19 locations in France with an outlet in Giverny and a corner shop in Tudor style in the coastal town of Deauville. The Flagshipstore on Boulevard Haussmann in Paris is a network of three buildings with products of around 3,000 brands. There is also a location in Doha, Qatar.
The company was started around the same time as other famous French stores such as Le Bon Marché (1852) and La Samaritaine (1870), both of which, like Printemps, took care of the growing bourgeoisie of the country.
“Being French and having an exotic attraction,” can help Printemps succeed, said Hunter Abrams, a 33-year-old photographer in Manhattan. “There is nothing that fills up between fashionable things that are also portable and perhaps shift the border a little.”
But mx. Abrams wondered how recent economic events could influence the outlook of the store. “We are in a very precarious financial situation and it feels like we are on the edge of a cliff,” MX. Said Abrams. “So who knows. I want it to work.”
