As Luxury Slows, Paris Department Stores Bet Big on Menswear Growth

PARIS — Regardless of the slowdown in luxurious spending and an general rocky retail surroundings, Parisian department shops are bullish about menswear.

Printemps lately opened a 2,690-square-foot idea retailer area on its floor ground devoted to males’s equipment, magnificence, watches, jewellery and residential, and Galeries Lafayette is gearing up for a full revamp of its four-floor menswear constructing slated for 2026.

It’s much less a growth within the class than a slow-and-steady post-pandemic climb, mentioned Galeries Lafayette director of menswear Alice Feillard.

“We are able to see that males started following ladies’s emotional purchasing values” in the course of the pandemic, Feillard mentioned. “Now it has moved from a extra rational and practical shopping for to a extra emotional and trendy shopping for.”

Males’s habits have modified from looking for fundamentals like T-shirts and sweaters, to extra designer-driven inventive items, formal workwear, assertion items and a heightened curiosity in sharp silhouettes. The shift has been constant throughout classes together with luxurious, equipment, modern, city and out of doors, Feillard mentioned.

Copenhagen-based model Les Deux was nearly unknown in France when it opened a pop-up at Galeries Lafayette three years in the past. Now it has seven shop-in-shop outposts in Paris and regional shops. The area at Galeries Lafayette generated “seven-digit income” final yr alone, reflecting the purchasing shift, famous Feillard.

Distant work performs an element, mentioned Les Deux head of gross sales for France Eric Obré, as males need to “sharpen up a bit” when they’re outdoors of the home.

“Males have gotten much more concerned about manufacturers. Individuals purchase into narrative as a lot as product now, which I believe is a response to how a lot content material is round. Everybody needs garments that symbolize them and their values, and so they discover that individuality within the model universe they relate to. It’s an thrilling time for the trade,” Obré mentioned.

Male buyers are versed in design lingo reminiscent of “placket” or “selvedge,” he added. “They’re much more conscious of what number of selections go into every garment.”

Les Deux is one in every of Galeries Lafayette’s current standout success tales, however it’s definitely not alone, famous Feillard. A devoted menswear nook from French model Lemaire was initially slated for a six-month run however was so profitable it has now been prolonged by way of the spring.

Different indie manufacturers which were successful with the extra fashion-forward male shopper are Ami, Courrèges and Jacquemus. Rick Owens opened earlier this month, and Ami will open an unique pop-up there in March. Classic label Cent Neuf will open its devoted males’s nook Jan. 29, throughout males’s style week.

Skims is one other success story: having opened as an unique at Galeries Lafayette in September, it quick turned the shop’s second bestselling underwear model for males, trailing solely stalwart Calvin Klein. Now it should open its personal devoted males’s nook in July.

With the revamp, Galeries Lafayette will enhance its luxurious and unbiased designer choices, in addition to broaden its shoe division. The extra trendy presentation is poised to attraction to the division retailer’s shifting demographic as it’s much less reliant on giant Chinese language tour teams and sees extra American, Center Japanese and native French buyers come by way of its doorways.

Presently, menswear accounts for 15 % of gross sales at Galeries Lafayette’s Boulevard Haussmann flagship, and that proportion is increased in its 18 regional shops. The lads’s pattern is just not confined to Paris, Feillard mentioned. The retailer additionally revamped the menswear sections in Bordeaux and Strasbourg.

“We’re very sturdy [in the regions]…we all know now we have the potential to recruit some native and worldwide prospects with a extra premium supply,” she mentioned.

The Galeries Lafayette Paris flagship revamp will change up every little thing from the structure and stream to the assortment, enlarge the posh supply and concentrate on architectural touches reminiscent of opening street-level home windows to permit extra mild. Will probably be a cross-category method, together with life-style, skincare and perfume.

And with luxurious progress stalled, there will even be a concentrate on upscaling modern manufacturers, together with labels like Casablanca, Officine Generale, Worry of God, Y3, Korean manufacturers System and Strong Homme, plus a multibrand area within the middle of the primary ground.

“Now that [luxury] manufacturers have elevated costs — and so they have been very, very excessive — they should rethink the totally different classes,” she mentioned. “We now have seen some extra accessible classes recruit extra aspirational prospects that [the luxury brands] misplaced. It’s undoubtedly an fascinating and essential alternative when it comes to class.”

Galeries Lafayette’s outpost on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées can also be seeing an uptick in curiosity for menswear. That retailer has extra of a concentrate on experimental and rising manufacturers, in addition to a youthful shopper with the next share of American vacationers.

Galeries Lafayette has additionally lately revamped its males’s choices in regional shops in Bordeaux, Good and Strasbourg with extra fashion-forward and premium choices, and can proceed to develop the class in its 18 regional shops.

The Printemps nook additionally capitalized on this shift. “For a very long time, the lads’s enterprise was primarily, if not solely, about clothes. Within the final couple years, we’ve seen a shift in buyer habits, with extra males shopping for magnificence merchandise, purses, objects and small equipment,” mentioned Printemps chief merchandising officer Karen Vernet.

“We are able to see that, particularly now, luxurious progress is sort of sophisticated for the manufacturers within the ladies’s market, and particularly [women’s] equipment market is a little more mature,” Feillard mentioned. “There’s a stronger alternative to develop within the males’s class.”