Parisian designer Laura Gonzalez could have easily been overwhelmed by a project that involved hard-launching a famed and venerable French luxury retailer inside one of Manhattan’s most well-respected art deco buildings, One Wall Street. The challenge: How to marry the rich heritage of the Printemps brand, founded in a classic Boulevard Haussmann building in Paris in 1865, with the architectural style of a classic Manhattan address?
Gonzalez’s answer was to flex. Instead of developing a singular style to define this important new addition to the Financial District’s cultural landscape, she created ten distinct spaces by turns colorful and whimsical, futuristic and fresh, and reverential to the brand’s and the building’s storied pasts.
The 55,000-square-foot Printemps New York, now open, spreads over two floors inside One Wall Street. This footprint spans the original One Wall Street building as well as a 1960s-era modern glass and metal annex, connected via the beauty department. Each of Gonzalez’s rooms takes shoppers on an ethereal journey. But wait there’s more: Five food and beverage options await within, including a fine-dining restaurant, Maison Passerelle, all overseen by culinary director Gregory Gourdet.
Gonzalez’s design for the spaces takes inspiration from an imaginary sprawling and chic Parisian apartment. She developed sections where retail and hospitality intersect, given names such as “The Salon” and “The Boudoir,” each showcasing a different mood illustrated via bold materials and unexpected details.
Patrons can shop for a new pair of Nikes in The Sneaker Room, accessed through a cloud-like entryway; the ceiling is an LED screen, while fiberglass totems serve as seating. The Red Room, meanwhile, features a forest motif of dancing leaves that extends to carpets and benches, referencing an original mosaic by Pierre Mesguich, the artisan who contributed the mosaic at the entrance of Printemps Paris 50 years ago.
Printemps New York touts an anti-department store approach, though the retail offerings—from high-end fashion to stylish streetwear, along with jewelry, fragrance, and beauty products—won’t seem out of the ordinary to seasoned shoppers.
What may continue to surprise visitors is the range of materials and styles that unfold while moving throughout the spaces. Gonzalez, who drew from Printemps’s architectural and design heritage, employs wood floors with stone inlays, custom tiles, and curved petals made from solid wood. Furniture was constructed from upcycled materials. Artists were commissioned to create frescoes and sculptures.
As in her 2022 redesign of Cartier’s Fifth Avenue store, Gonzalez, who has studios in Paris and New York, seems to draw the right amount of influence from both of these design capitals at Printemps, establishing a new destination in Lower Manhattan that is both slyly historical and stylishly contemporary. Think of it as one of the world’s largest concept shops.