The exhibition The Birth of Department Stores at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris: our never-before-seen images!
Paris Museum of Decorative Arts
Until October 13, 2024
Want to go shopping? We're not talking about a shopping trip here, but a trip down memory lane. Like a journey through Émile Zola's famous novel, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Paris takes us through the emergence of department stores and the disappearance of small businesses in a profusion of similar old and disparate works in the windows, displays and counters of the time. For a perfect immersion in the aisles of Bon Marché and La Samaritaine, the Parisian institution had to dig into its archives, taking out from its drawers seven hundred heterogeneous products, long dresses, costumes, accessories, children's toys and household items. art. Here, lingerie and lace mingle with fabrics, rocking horses, porcelain dolls and silk sheets. Through deliciously vintage advertising posters, the exhibition immerses us in the excitement of shopping malls, resurrecting the buying fever of the Parisian bourgeoisie. A chic and daring encounter between the 19th century of the Baudelairian flâneur and the new “kingdom of women”.
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Did you know? For his novel Au Bonheur des Dames, the eponymous store imagined by Zola was largely inspired by Le Bon Marché, the first Parisian department store! Zola is even directly inspired by Aristide Boucicaut, its founder, for the character of director Mouret, who falls madly in love with his saleswoman. |
