French Dressing
Beginning Saturday, American women will be able to taste real French dressing without setting foot in Paris. Galeries Lafayette, the largest French retailer, with 17 department stores in France and one each in Singapore and Bangkok, opens its doors for business in New York.
Occupying the 40,000-square-foot space in Trump Tower at 10 E. 57th St. between Fifth and Madison avenues, the company’s first U.S. store will sell women’s clothing, shoes, accessories, makeup and perfume, almost exclusively French.
“Everything about the store will be French,” says fashion director Marianne Millies-Lacroix.
Aware that there’s no dearth of French fashion in the neighborhood--Bergdorf Goodman, Bendel’s, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s are nearby--the new store’s executives are leaning heavily on moderately priced labels that have been unavailable in the United States or had only a minimal presence.
Not surprisingly, designer’s secondary lines are well represented. Lacroix says that she has particularly high hopes for KL by Karl Lagerfeld, M by Thierry Mugler, Inscription Rykiel, Gaultier Junior, and Yves Saint Laurent Variation. There’s a smattering of established names--Jean Charles de Castelbajac, Guy Laroche, Cloe--and a clutch of young designers, Myrene de Premonville and Michel Klein, among them.
In cosmetics and perfume, the store will introduce Bourjois makeup, which is made by the same company that produces some of the Chanel line.
“Of course, French dressing is not just about clothing,” says Lacroix. “It’s a whole approach to fashion that mixes pieces from different designers and uses a lot of accessories. It’s about mixing the cheap with the chic, creating a look that is creative and completely personal.”
To make sure that the message is properly communicated, French stylists and a professor from the Institut de la Mode, a Paris fashion school, were sent to New York to instruct all of Galeries Lafayette’s sales staff in the art of French chic.
The design of the store, too, will emphasize the French identity of Galeries Lafayette, even if it makes a reference that very few Americans know--modern France. A Franco-American architect team composed of New York-based Kenneth Walker and Frenchman Jean-Michel Wilmotte joined forces to create a sleek space that relies on frosted glass, steel and blond wood fixtures.
“We’re taking a chance. France is Versailles (or the 18th Century) for most Americans,” Lacroix admits.
Already, New York retailers are wondering whether the allure of French fashion will be strong enough for the new store to succeed. Le Printemps, the Paris department store that is Galeries Lafayette’s fiercest competitor, bombed in Denver not more than two years ago. (To translate that rivalry into American terms, Galeries Lafayette is to Printemps what Macy’s is to Bloomingdale’s.)
“Right now in New York, there are a lot of stores and not enough customers,” says Jon Weiser, president of Charivari, the chain of seven high-fashion boutiques in the city. He considers the city’s current retail recession the worst since the Depression.
Other retailers wonder how tempted New York shoppers will be by a selection of French second lines. “New Yorkers who know French fashion are willing to spend for it,” one retail executive says. The enfeebled economy notwithstanding, Georges Meyer, president of Galeries Lafayette, says that the store decided to expand because “Japanese and Americans are our biggest customers.”
A further inducement was developer Donald Trump’s uncharacteristically generous gesture--a year’s free rent.
