Paris Department Stores
A walk through Paris, one stop at a time.
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1
ParisWhere Parisians Shopped Before the Department Store
In Chinese, Japanese and Korean, the word for department store is written with characters meaning "hundred," "goods" and…
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2
ParisBaron Haussmann and the Making of Modern Paris
To understand why the department store was almost inevitable, we need to go back to nineteenth-century Paris. The first…
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3
ParisSocial Distinction and the Birth of the Department Store
Just as people today move to big cities for work, in the nineteenth century many headed to Paris to find jobs - and ther…
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4
ParisNew Fashion Shops vs. the Arcades
The arcades may have become the shopping malls of Paris, but the shops inside them were actually not much fun to shop in…
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5
ParisBon Marché, the World's First Department Store
To understand how Bon Marché survived an uncertain economy and became a department store, we first need to look at who r…
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6
ParisHow Boucicaut Lured Shoppers Through the Doors
The heart of Boucicaut's approach was simple: above all, make the goods impossible to miss. A department store with a gi…
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7
ParisWhat Boucicaut Understood About Parisian Shoppers
Boucicaut's interior was laid out exactly as he planned. Vast halls, eye-catching spectacles, and goods stacked floor to…
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8
ParisSemi-Luxuries and Must-Haves of 19th-Century Paris
In status-conscious societies, in Europe and elsewhere, what you wore showed who you were. But the Industrial Revolution…
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9
ParisBoucicaut's Groundbreaking Marketing
When you're selling something, how you promote it can matter as much as the product itself, sometimes more. Until the ea…
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10
ParisBon Marché Today: A Shopper's Promenade
So far, we've followed how Bon Marché grew from a small shop into a department store. Now let's look at it as it is toda…
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11
ParisWhere Culture Meets Shopping: Galeries Lafayette
Galeries Lafayette began in 1893 as a small shop on Rue La Fayette and, through steady growth and expansion work, became…
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12
ParisPrintemps, the Department Store of Many Firsts
Printemps was founded in 1865 by Jules Jaluzot and has earned the label "first" in a number of areas. To begin with, it…