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Legendary Parisian Boutique Shuts Up Shop

by

Lucy Archibald

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This is the featured image caption
Credit: This is the featured image credit

The evolution in fashion sales channels means Maria Luisa, one of Paris’ most famous destination boutiques, is set to close in August.

Over the last decade, collaborations between luxury brands and contemporary artists have gone beyond mere artistic partnerships towards a new kind of luxury branding.

PARIS – Art and fashion have always developed side by side, for fashion, like art, often gives visual expression to the cultural zeitgeist. During the 1920s, Salvador Dalí created dresses for Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiapparelli. In the 1930s, Ferragamo’s shoes commissioned designs for advertisements from Futurist painter Lucio Venna, while Gianni Versace commissioned works from artists such as Alighiero Boetti and Roy Lichtenstein for the launch of his collections. Yves Saint Laurent’s vast art collection, recently auctioned at Christie’s in Paris, testified to his great love of art and revealed the influence of a variety of artists on his own designs.

In the 1980s, relationships between luxury brands and artists were advanced when Alain Dominique Perrin created the Fondation Cartier. In the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, a book marking the foundation’s 20th anniversary, Perrin says he makes “a connection between all the different sorts of arts, and luxury goods are a kind of art. Luxury goods are handicrafts of art, applied art.”

The Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemparain building in Paris

The evolution in fashion sales channels means Maria Luisa, one of Paris’ most famous destination boutiques, is set to close in August.

The evolution in fashion sales channels means Maria Luisa, one of Paris’ most famous destination boutiques, is set to close in August.

Just days after LS reported on the surge in luxury companies racing to get online, esteemed Paris retailer, Maria Luisa Poumaillou has announced that she is going to shut up shop on Rue Rouget de L’Isle in August to focus on the next phase in her career, which she feels should be characterized by online and department store-based retail.

In January 2009, Poumaillou was appointed fashion editor of Printemps department store, and will continue to oversee her shop-in-shop located there after the closure of her eponymous boutique. She also has plans to open an e-boutique on Thecorner.com, operated by Yoox.

The retail veteran’s view on ending a chapter which began with her first boutique in 1988 is that she can better market and sell the designers she carries, including young names like Christopher Kane and Marios Schwab, not in the context of a small concept store, but online and in large department stores, both of which she described as being “100 times” more powerful than her much loved boutique, in terms of sales and visibility.

Independent boutiques were essential when big department stores were not so forward-looking, but Poumaillou recognizes that times have changed: “The evolution of the retail sector over the past 20 years has been colossal.”

However, Poumaillou does not believe that the multi-brand boutique format has completely had its day, citing talks with partners to open stores in China and Japan as well as the possibility of using her store at 38 Rue du Mont Thabor as a dedicated launch pad for her fledgling signature label, which is currently distributed in around 30 sales points.

Sources
WWD

Lucy Archibald
Lucy Archibald

Associate Editor

RETAIL

Legendary Parisian Boutique Shuts Up Shop

by

Lucy Archibald

|

This is the featured image caption
Credit : This is the featured image credit

The evolution in fashion sales channels means Maria Luisa, one of Paris’ most famous destination boutiques, is set to close in August.

Over the last decade, collaborations between luxury brands and contemporary artists have gone beyond mere artistic partnerships towards a new kind of luxury branding.

PARIS – Art and fashion have always developed side by side, for fashion, like art, often gives visual expression to the cultural zeitgeist. During the 1920s, Salvador Dalí created dresses for Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiapparelli. In the 1930s, Ferragamo’s shoes commissioned designs for advertisements from Futurist painter Lucio Venna, while Gianni Versace commissioned works from artists such as Alighiero Boetti and Roy Lichtenstein for the launch of his collections. Yves Saint Laurent’s vast art collection, recently auctioned at Christie’s in Paris, testified to his great love of art and revealed the influence of a variety of artists on his own designs.

In the 1980s, relationships between luxury brands and artists were advanced when Alain Dominique Perrin created the Fondation Cartier. In the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, a book marking the foundation’s 20th anniversary, Perrin says he makes “a connection between all the different sorts of arts, and luxury goods are a kind of art. Luxury goods are handicrafts of art, applied art.”

The Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemparain building in Paris

The evolution in fashion sales channels means Maria Luisa, one of Paris’ most famous destination boutiques, is set to close in August.

The evolution in fashion sales channels means Maria Luisa, one of Paris’ most famous destination boutiques, is set to close in August.

Just days after LS reported on the surge in luxury companies racing to get online, esteemed Paris retailer, Maria Luisa Poumaillou has announced that she is going to shut up shop on Rue Rouget de L’Isle in August to focus on the next phase in her career, which she feels should be characterized by online and department store-based retail.

In January 2009, Poumaillou was appointed fashion editor of Printemps department store, and will continue to oversee her shop-in-shop located there after the closure of her eponymous boutique. She also has plans to open an e-boutique on Thecorner.com, operated by Yoox.

The retail veteran’s view on ending a chapter which began with her first boutique in 1988 is that she can better market and sell the designers she carries, including young names like Christopher Kane and Marios Schwab, not in the context of a small concept store, but online and in large department stores, both of which she described as being “100 times” more powerful than her much loved boutique, in terms of sales and visibility.

Independent boutiques were essential when big department stores were not so forward-looking, but Poumaillou recognizes that times have changed: “The evolution of the retail sector over the past 20 years has been colossal.”

However, Poumaillou does not believe that the multi-brand boutique format has completely had its day, citing talks with partners to open stores in China and Japan as well as the possibility of using her store at 38 Rue du Mont Thabor as a dedicated launch pad for her fledgling signature label, which is currently distributed in around 30 sales points.

Sources
WWD

Lucy Archibald
Lucy Archibald

Associate Editor

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