Opening night at Printemps
Photo: Lexie Moreland/WWD via Getty Images
A few months ago, I was on the train home to Brooklyn when I overheard a young person say something shocking: “Fidi is awesome,” she told her companions in earnest, rattling off a list of bars, restaurants, and other establishments in the area I’d never heard of. Everyone nodded in agreement.
What? I shook my head as though I were in an alternate universe. I’ve lived in New York my whole life — I’ve spent late nights at China Chalet (RIP), found diamonds in the rough at Century 21, and taken meetings in the shiny new WSA building — but never have I ever heard anyone say that Fidi is awesome.
Fidi is the capitalist armpit of New York. That’s not even a shocking or terribly original thing to say; it just is what it is. Fidi is dark. It is crowded with tourists, puffer-vest-wearing finance bros, and purveyors of sad desk salads. It is decidedly not chic, which is perhaps why the arrival of Printemps — a French department-store chain, known for its iconic stained-glass dome in Paris and its selection of both luxury European designers and emerging ones — has caused such a stir.
Last Saturday, on opening day, I arrived at Printemps around noon to find a line of at least 50 people stretched down the block. “Oh, fuck no,” said a man surveying the crowd. “I don’t need to shop that badly.”
Photo: John Angelillo/UPI/Shutterstock
Some people did. After bailing and getting on a train headed uptown, I overheard a woman say she got there first thing in the morning and waited 30 minutes to peek inside. She sported two small green Printemps shopping bags filled with “souvenirs,” prompting another curious rider to ask questions.
“I just wanted to see it,” she explained. “It’s like Anthropologie meets Bergdorf.” This wasn’t necessarily a criticism. The space, which was designed by architect Laura Gonzalez and is spread across 55,000 square feet at One Wall Street, is whimsical but upscale, with colorful stained-glass windows by Studio Pierre Marie that evoke the department store’s original Art Nouveau design, combined with Art Deco touches in homage to the building, like “marble” tables made out of recycled plastic and colorful wallpaper. Gonzalez also sourced antique furniture from French flea markets and filled the space with squiggly mirrors resembling Ettore Sottsass’s selfie-friendly Memphis masterpiece. “It’s pretty, like a big boutique.”
Photo: Carlos Chiossone/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
Thankfully, when I ventured back downtown the next morning, on a rainy Monday, I walked right in. But the store was already bustling, with every seat at Café Jalu, where you can get coffee and pastries, filled. The energy and excitement in the room were like a shot of espresso on their own. The ground floor, which is called the “playroom” and looks like a circus tent, is filled with cheerful French accessories, like Cahu bags made from repurposed bouncy castles and red Carel shoes, mixed in with hard-to-come-by sneakers, which are displayed in their own trippy space that will allegedly also be used for meditation and French lessons. Overall, the store is Parisian in that French labels like Jacquemus are prominently displayed, and I saw at least one woman walking around with her small pug dog. But other than that, I felt more like I’d fallen into maximalist Wonderland than the City of Lights.
Photo: Carlos Chiossone/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
One noticeable difference is that the people working in the New York store are upbeat and friendly. You can identify them by the emerald-green buttons pinned to their chests, which look like something out of Wicked. In fact, Printemps is very Shiz University. Walking through it is like traveling through an elaborate movie set or a ride at Disney. “Welcome to the Boudoir,” cooed one woman when I entered a mirrored room on the second floor curated with vintage evening wear by French designers like Yves Saint Laurent and Jean Paul Gaultier and contemporary designers like Simone Rocha, which I arrived at via a surreal, Hobbit-esque beauty corridor filled with brands I’d never heard of but was curious about.
A friend who grew up in Las Vegas said the store’s interior design reminded her of the Wynn casino, which surprised her, but I thought the similarities made perfect sense. Printemps New York is not Printemps Paris; it’s a translation of the latter designed to make tourists ooh and ahh and transport locals for a much-needed petit retail vacation. It is unlike any other store in New York, and thank goodness for that. It’s unpretentious and full of life, inviting you to look, touch, and smell — like the Museum of Ice Cream or Sloomoo, only for adults who love shiny, expensive, beautiful things.
Photo: Carlos Chiossone/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
On the Monday I visited, Salon Vert, a Champagne bar on the second floor, was completely packed with people happily drinking before noon. The store’s 85-seat main restaurant, Maison Passerelle, will open later this month, but I think it’s safe to say that it will be a much more pleasant place to hang out than the Pret a Manger nearby. In the meantime, you can also snag a seat at the swanky Red Room Bar for a shrimp cocktail. Printemps may or may not be a department store, but it is a happy space to spend an afternoon or maybe a whole day.
If I had one criticism, it’s that Printemps currently lacks stuff. By day three, one mannequin on the second floor was completely stripped bare. The Red Room, the final stop on the store’s retail roller-coaster ride, is the barest of them all. This at least allows the landmarked space, which is covered in a stunning 1931 mosaic mural by Hildreth Meière that has been out of public view since 2001, to shine. Still: “It doesn’t have enough merchandise to be a department store,” said the shopper I brushed shoulders with on the subway. In the end, she felt the selection was “out of her league” and “didn’t make any sense” for her.
Photo: Carlos Chiossone/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
I am confident that merchandising is a problem Printemps can solve over time as it gets to know its customer better, and we get further into the season. (I’m sure the tariff situation isn’t helping, either — bienvenue aux États-Unis!) I left empty-handed (minus a chocolate-chip cookie from Café Jalu), but I was tempted by an Osoi handbag, which I’d only ever seen online, and did learn about another one called Saison 1865, which is exclusive to Printemps. But where was the Dries Van Noten? The Charvet?
“Imagine if they had more shoes,” whispered one woman as I ambled around the Red Room. Yes, imagine! Just give them une seconde.
