简介

The birth of department stores and their golden age (1850-1930) has often aroused great interest and fascinated the imagination. However, their story has very rarely been told over a long period of time, until today, and internationally, taking into account economic, political, sociological, cultural or artistic aspects. This is what this catalog offers, with a multidisciplinary summary and illustrated by an enlightening iconography (paintings, prints, photographs, archives) and sometimes unpublished. It thus highlights the spread of department stores in a colonial and non-European context, questions the representations of bosses and employees, and in particular the place of women, addresses the modes of consumption from the Second Empire to the emergence of e-commerce, and deals with the relationship of department stores with the development of shopping, the art of shop windows, the distribution of ready-to-wear, advertising and cinema. These themes are structured through the prism of the history of architecture: buildings designed to dazzle, places of staging and life, department stores shape cities and society, imposing themselves as temples of consumption and emotion. Exhibition at the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine from 6 November 2024 to 6 April 2025.