Can’t hold it after my HK viewpoint sections and wanna share this with you all now. Original sourced from her Hong Kong’s PR through a friend, some might have read it online (as shown below), but this is exciting – Maria Luisa Poumaillou will be on board to consult the 144 year old department store Printemps’ womanswear and menswear selection in Paris. Certainly, this is a long awaited reposition strategy for the aging store. It wasn’t so much of a surprise to me about the cooperation or the meaning behind, but the relationship between the two, Mme herself often publicly disses on big groups, but since Printemps is no longer PPR-owned, and now belong to Italian family Borletti. No wonder she’s willing to help.
I guess everyone sensed it by Printemps’ recent campaign, it has never been more high-end fashion oriented, i.e. Agyness for AW08 and currently with Raquel in Balmain. Also, the store is undergoing a tremendous makeover aesthetically by Yabu Pushelberg, who designed Lane Crawford in Hong Kong, Bergdorf Goodman in New York and US chain Neiman Marcus. With HRH’s magic touch, the whole grand magasin retail scene in Paris will sure make a big enough difference to compete with Le Bon Marché and the ones in the UK. Knowing her, she must see the potential there.
(original news from fashionwiredaily) French department store chain Printemps has appointed the famed independent Paris retailer Maria Luisa Poumaillou to be its first fashion editor. The appointment is a major surprise and a significant coup for Printemps, as Poumaillou has been one of Europe’s leading avant-garde retailers in the past two decades.
Under the terms of the arrangement, Printemps signed a “partnership agreement” with Poumaillou, naming her Fashion Editor, a new title. Her first goal – opening new shop in the second half of 2009 on the 2nd floor of Printemps de la Mode, the key fashion destination of the group’s flagship boulevard Haussmann store in central Paris.
“We are very happy with this partnership, which is absolutely unique in the fashion world. For all of us, Maria Luisa Poumaillou is the symbol of chic avant-garde style… I am sure that her shop will become the star space for new prestigious fashion designers,” Printemps CEO Paolo de Cesare said in a release.
Maria Luisa Poumaillou
Maria Luisa, as she is universally known, is a much heralded fashion forward retailer whose mini empire of shops clustered around the rue Cambon, two blocks down from Chanel, is a major shopping destination for knowledgeable fashionistas.
Poumaillou will also act as a consultant for women’s and men’s fashion brands, with a particular focus on international designers, and is expected to organize special fashion events with the chain.
Many French credit Poumaillou with inventing multi-brand boutiques with her stores on the rue du Mont Thabor, perpendicular to rue Cambon. She is also famed for promoting young talents who later went on to greatness: Martine Sitbon, Helmut Lang, John Galliano, Ann Demeulemeester, Martin Margiela, Nicolas Ghesquière, Hussein Chalayan, Rick Owens and Christopher Kane, to name a few.
“Creating a cutting-edge multi-brand shop in a department store space is totally innovative. It’s a way to offer new talents or exceptional designers to a wider clientele who might not have had the opportunity to know them,” Maria Luisa said in the release.
“At Vogue, we do not take for granted the miraculous emergence, development, and ascendance of great artists. We depend on them for our livelihood. Without the likes of [Polly] Mellen, Adele, or Beyonce and the smashing of the rules that their progress gloriously entails, there is no culture worth celebrating. Olivier Theyskens’s recent departure from Nina Ricci suggests to me that the vital role of artistic talent has been obscured in the current economic climate. My staff and I were shocked to learn that Theyskens’s contract would not be renewed; and I am very concerned that the business of fashion is undervaluing the most important asset our industry requires: creative visionaries. There’s a reason we continue to see Theyskens’s influence everywhere, from catwalks to the mall. He’ll be back, but fashion must hold its nerve. This is the mission that we at Vogue happily shoulder.” - Anna Wintour, US Vogue April 09.
