If you’ve walked past the empty Barneys New York building in Chelsea in recent years, you may have thought, We don’t shop like we used to.
Remember when going to a New York department store was an event? A pastime? Something you did with friends and partners. You could spend an entire Saturday afternoon roaming the floors, immersed in a guided tour of taste, discovering designers, chatting with “your” salesperson, getting a friend’s honest opinion about those Prada platform sandals in between gossip sprints. Whether or not you ever bought anything at Barneys, just being there was joyful.
Today, we can buy clothes from any designer anytime, anywhere. Texting mirror selfies to friends really isn’t the same, alone among the cardboard and tissue paper. No wonder online-shopping fatigue has begun to set in.
Can the French save our shopping?
Before entering the about-to-open Printemps at One Wall Street last week, I replied with a Gallic shrug. But after touring the two-floor space envisioned by Paris-based interior designer Laura Gonzalez with Printemps Global C.E.O. Jean-Marc Bellaiche, I got to a strong maybe.
Granted, the clothes were still being hung on custom floral racks and Marni bags positioned on mushroomy marble tables for the March 21 opening, but the level of luxurious craftsmanship and fantastical detail was so extreme that even being in a construction site was wildly impressive. The landmarked Art Deco skyscraper is an architectural marvel that dates to 1931, and Gonzalez leaned into that era’s design.
From the Ritz-level dressing rooms to the expensively tiled bathrooms, not a single detail at Printemps is off the rack. (The millions of glimmering mosaic tiles lining the entirety of the shoe department—set in the Red Room, which has its own separate and distinct landmark status—were originally laid by the artist Hildreth Meière.)
“We started with the conviction that New York doesn’t need another department store,” says Bellaiche. “If we do something, it has to be amazing.”
He and the Printemps America C.E.O., Laura Lendrum, who began the project in 2021, when in-person shopping was an oxymoron and the Wall Street area was a ghost town, refuse to call this a department store.
There are no static shop-in-shop designer boutiques, Bellaiche insists; rather, there are several open “birdcages” on the main floor that can be taken over for occasional designer pop-ups, such as forthcoming ones from Jacquemus and a Jean Paul Gaultier couture exhibit.
Otherwise, the 450 brands carried by the store—25 percent of which are either new to the American market or hard to find—are mixed into an upscale treasure hunt that ranges from Balenciaga and Nike to lesser-known labels such as Vautrait and Le Monde Béryl, with its gallerina shoes.
Bellaiche prefers words like “retailtainment” and phrases like “French curation meets American hospitality,” citing Disney and five-star hotels as inspiration.
He tells new hires, “This is the gift to New Yorkers, the gift to you. Give it back to your clients. Don’t be on your phone, be generous in your time. Be engaged.” Where exactly France meets New York in that statement is unclear, but the “engaged” part would be nice.
The retailtainment is real, and food is a big part of it. Printemps has a café next to the sneaker room, a raw bar opening onto the main floor, a champagne-and-juice bar in the spa, a cocktail bar in the shoe department, and a fine-dining restaurant overseen by the James Beard Award–winning, Top Chef–appearing Gregory Gourdet. He will incorporate ingredients from the formerly French-colonial world—including Africa, Vietnam, the Caribbean, and even French Canada—into his French cooking.
There is not just a beauty department but also four marble-lined treatment rooms, where facialists and makeup artists will get clients party-ready. (The Boudoir room is dedicated to eveningwear, including couture, vintage, and fine jewelry, with the idea that high-net-worth New Yorkers go to lots of galas.)
Clients can bring their own old, tatty clothes to the Atélier to be repaired or sewn into something new. There will be cultural talks and events, even conferences and fashion shows, such as the one Printemps recently hosted in its Boulevard Haussmann flagship store, in Paris. (Perhaps they will fly over the world-champion Foosball player who played with Parisian clients who registered for 10-minute slots. “She killed all of them,” Bellaiche noted. While pregnant.)
What it will take to coax New Yorkers back into stores isn’t games or Gaultier but a forgotten feeling. Asked how he wanted customers to feel at Printemps, Bellaiche said, “We need to feel comfortable, delighted, surprised, learn a few things, and be happy.” So far, Printemps has made a convincing start.
Christine Muhlke, a former editor at The New York Times and Bon Appétit, is a co-author of Wine Simple,with Le Bernardin’s Aldo Sohm, and a co-author of Phaidon’s Signature Dishes That Matter. She is also the founder of culinary consultancy Bureau X and the creator of the Xtine newsletter
