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Recently, the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, France presented the exhibition "The Birth of the Department Store: Fashion, Design, Toys, Advertising, 1852-1925", which tells the rise and evolution of department stores through decorative arts, product design, posters and other objects.

According to art critic Oliver Weinreit, the exhibition depicts the golden age of the department store, a concept that is about to disappear. It also prompts us to imagine a new kind of urban public space: one that is not necessarily centered around consumption, but transformed into a place for reading, relaxing, learning, creating and communicating.

On the top floor of Paris’s famed La Samaritaine department store, rows of empty Champagne-branded lounge chairs line an artificial beach, facing a wall-sized digital screen showing the sun setting over a shimmering ocean horizon. Downstairs, futuristic masks flash red LEDs in the “beauty light bar.” Organizers claim the lights stimulate natural collagen production and restore radiance to sagging skin. Nearby, an immersive Olympics retail experience awaits customers, promoting plush mascots in anthropomorphic French revolutionary hats.

La Samaritaine department store in Paris. Photo: Jared Chulski

The only thing missing from this temple of modern shopping is the customers. La Samaritaine originally opened in 1870 as an "everything" emporium that sold everything from lingerie to lawn mowers. In 2001, it was acquired by luxury giant LVMH, which four years later began a controversial 16-year, €750 million renovation. The project was led by Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa. The department store now also includes a five-star hotel, with rooms starting at around €2,000 a night.

However, since reopening three years ago, the department store seems to have struggled to attract shoppers. Occasionally, tourists come to take photos of the building's famous Art Nouveau atrium, but few stop to buy anything. La Samaritaine is not alone: ​​department stores around the world have faced dwindling foot traffic, and many have had to close and transform into co-working spaces, libraries, apartments and office buildings.

Inspired by the Opera House... Crespin and Dufayel department stores. Photo: Les Arts Décoratifs/Christophe Dellière

Today’s shopping scene is a bleak reminder of the heyday of the French capital’s “grands magasins” (large department stores). The history of these stores is on display at the Museum of Decorative Arts, Paris, not far from the empty floors of La Samaritaine. It’s a retail extravaganza that chimes with Paris’ current nostalgia for hosting the 1924 Olympics.

The exhibition “The Birth of the Department Store: Fashion, Design, Toys, Advertising, 1852-1925” celebrates the birth of an architectural typology and cultural phenomenon that transformed urban life as we know it. Could it also offer some inspiration for today’s struggling stores to find a new lease of life?

There are no digital sunsets or fake beaches, but the world’s first department stores are also awe-inspiring spectacles. Oversized lithographs in the exhibition depict the grand interiors of these temples of consumption, which first appeared in the 1850s, fueled by the economic growth of Napoleon III’s Second Empire. Gilded chandeliers hang from the buildings’ vaulted glass ceilings, and winding staircases between tiers of balconies are supported by plump angels of love and busty caryatids.

Staircase of the Dufayel department store in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, 1905

These cathedrals of commerce sat in key locations along Paris’ newly paved boulevards, part of Baron Haussmann’s reconstruction of the city. The Crespin-Dufayel department store, for example, covered more than two and a half acres and employed 15,000 people. Inspired by opera houses, the interiors of these stores were designed as dramatic stage sets, providing a place for the emerging middle class to express themselves, and the rising social elite of industrialists, bankers, and merchants flocked here to showcase themselves.

The key to the success of this new type of store was that it was designed as a place to linger, providing the nouveau riche with a noble setting to enjoy a day out. They were havens of freedom and pleasure, where women could relax and socialize without the constraints of their husbands. It was a separate world brought to life in Émile Zola’s 1883 novel The Ladies’ Paradise. People were treated as guests, not customers, and they were under no obligation to buy. At the time, this was a revolutionary innovation. Against these luxurious backdrops, shop owners began to hone the emerging art of merchandising, juxtaposing items in intoxicating ways that, as one note put it, “inspired an irresistible desire to possess.”

Le Bon Marché, Paris's first department store. Aristide Boucicaut, the son of a milliner, went to Paris in 1852 to work as a cloth merchant and quickly realized that there was a market for a new type of institution that offered buyers more choice.

Department store poster design, 1888 © Les Arts Décoratifs / Jean Tholance

The stagecraft worked. Customers flocked to the stores, buying vast quantities of goods. Reinventing the image of a particular lifestyle was essential for the new bourgeoisie, and department stores provided a one-stop shop for a complete range of aristocratic items, from dresses to dining tables, tea sets and lampshades. A section of the exhibition is devoted to the democratisation of fashion, chronicling the emergence of ready-to-wear styles, thanks to the mechanisation of the textile industry, when entire outfits and accessories were mass-produced and sold as sets for the first time. Advertising posters on display promoted the “Parisian woman” – the ultimate embodiment of the stylish, independent woman, a materialised fantasy projection who set the trends and cemented Paris’s status as a capital of taste.

A poster announcing the launch of the new collection at the À la Place de Clichy department store. Photo: Les Arts Décoratifs/Christophe Dellière

The exhibition reveals how sales techniques were increasingly refined, including the invention of “bargain shows” to stimulate off-season buying. The annual calendar began to revolve around monthly sale periods, promoted by advertising campaigns in newspapers, with January’s sale periods focusing on bedding, April on suits, August on back-to-school items and December on toys. This approach helped clear stock, manage the flow of mass-produced goods and create a sense of urgency in customers, encouraging them to keep up with the latest trends. It was also the dawn of fast fashion – the exhibition features hastily produced accessories, fans, ties and hats that look as if they were picked out of a vintage version of Asos.

An example of an early mail-order catalogue on display in the exhibition. Photo: © Les Arts Décoratifs

“Can’t shop in person? That’s no excuse not to spend money!” Behold the birth of the mail-order catalog. An exhibition at the museum is devoted to early catalogs from the late 19th century, which feature beautiful illustrations of everything from umbrellas and walking sticks to tennis rackets and bicycles, modern consumer essentials. In particular, a double-page ad for a swimsuit and matching hat from Le Bon Marché is on display. And you might be surprised to learn that “subscription commerce” designed to encourage recurring purchases — an early precursor to Amazon’s “Subscribe & Save” — existed as early as the 1850s.

The overall effect of this glittering exhibition of commodities and materialism, while entertaining and illuminating, can be a little unsettling. This was the dawn of an era of unbridled consumerism, where marketing methods were refined, sales techniques were honed and a global obsession with acquiring more stuff was born. One section, titled “Children as the New Target Market,” traces the history of advertising directly to children, and is disturbing. Meanwhile, a presentation on the emergence of landfills, exploitative supply chain networks and the carbon footprint of the fast-fashion and furniture industries would have been a welcome addition.

Landfill

If the age of the department store is coming to an end, are we really going to lament that? Or will it prompt us to imagine a new kind of urban public space: places that are spectacular and fulfilling, but not necessarily centered around or pursued by the consumption of products? Like the great new libraries that have been built across Europe in recent years, can the multi-story temples of consumption of past centuries be transformed into places for reading, relaxing, learning, creating, and communicating, becoming the new living rooms of the modern city?

The exhibition “The Birth of the Department Store: Fashion, Design, Toys, Advertising, 1852-1925” will run until October 13.

(This article is translated from The Guardian. The author Oliver Wainwright is an art critic)