France's first department store: Le Bon Marché
A good place to spend your cold, hard cash in Paris
Imagine what life was like in Paris before department stores. I’m picturing open-air markets selling everything from hardware and tools to shoes and dress fabric. Shops with waist-to-ceiling vitrines with displays of shoes, dresses, suits for men, hats for men and women.
Then along came Au Bon Marché, one of the world’s first department stores.
Located in the 7th arrondisement of Paris (a great neighborhood) on rue de Sèvres, it was founded in 1852 by husband-and-wife duo Aristide and Marguerite Boucicaut.
Aristide was inspired to create the store after visiting the 1855 Paris Exposition and got lost in the confusion of vendors’ stands. He devised a plan to create, instead, a central location where people could do their shopping.
With the creation of the department store, Monsieur et Madame Boucicaut revolutionized the shopping experience for Parisians. With their vision, they established fixed pricing for goods (i.e. no haggling necessary), home delivery, the ability to exchange items, mail order, and occasional sales. (I imagine this is like when Amazon became a more convenient way for us to do our shopping.) The emphasis was on creating an all-in-one store for women especially, featuring le bonheur des dames, or ladies’ delights.
Initially named Au Bon Marché (‘the right price’), the store went through several expansions and was later renamed Le Bon Marché, or ‘the good deal’.
But today, if you step into the department store, you had better have a thick wallet or a high credit limit. This is one of the fancier Parisian shopping establishments. It sells high-end men’s and women’s clothing, jewelry and accessories, handbags, home goods, and beauty products. It also has some fun pop-up stores from time to time.
Le Bon Marché is really an experience masquerading as a department store.
Enter through the doors at the corner of rue de Sèvres and rue Velpeau, and some well-dressed men in suits and earpieces may greet you with a “bonjour” (usually if I say “bonjour” first, which is customary, though security guards sometimes aren’t part of that cultural greeting at the door).
From there, you can just wander around and explore. It almost doesn’t matter if you can’t afford most of the items for sale, it’s like walking through an art gallery.
But the crème de la crème for me is the impressive and expansive Le Grand Épicerie that is attached to Le Bon Marché. This place is…WOW. Just WOW. The only thing I can compare it to are the food halls at Selfridge’s or Harrod’s in London.
Le Grande Épicerie features an impressive array of high-end and ‘normal’ foods and other food items. You can have lunch there in a number of little restaurants, with some pretty fancy-pants places offering charcuterie, truffles, and seafood, which you can wash down with a glass of wine. There are also a few cafés for those who want a slice of cake and a coffee.
If you have plans to visit Paris, I would highly recommend a visit to this very old and wonderful piece of history.