L’Eclaireur Experience

The latest L’Eclaireur shop is not just a store or even a concept store, to define it means to go beyond the usual conception of shopping, even by L’Eclaireur’s lofty standards. It is stage, theater, installation, gallery, art and illusion.

Owners Martine and Armand Hadida handed over all design responsibilities of the new L’Eclaireur on 40 rue de Sévigné to the twisted mastermind of Belgian artist Arne Quinze and the result is nothing short of exceptional.

The ambiance is at once both breathtaking and eerie. The 420 square meter store features over 147 built-in flat screens all over the walls, with each depicting an extreme close-up of a human eye. Contrasted with the recycled materials that make up the walls - from wood, aluminum, and to carton - the effect is of chaos in the most dramatic of incarnations.

Clothes and accessories of Prada, Comme des Garçons, Jil Sander, Martin Margiela (to only name a few), and even menacing statuettes can be found within the cabinets of the paint-washed walls. Some are even hidden in secret compartments within the walls.

At the epicenter, even more histrionic than the eyeballs hanging in the walls, a sculpture stands that is made from two tons of wooden planks. Piled together scrappily and almost impossibly arched, the piece deserves to be exhibited in a museum.

There is so much movement and force in the sculpture that by looking at it for just a split second you would believe that is just about to shatter into smithereens.

It’s a long time coming since 1980 when the Hadida’s opened the doors of the very first L’Eclaireur. And it has only gone from strength to strength since then, uniquely housing fashion by incorporating a sense of design and architecture in the building.

It is this sense of playfulness and originality that sets them apart. So even if you don’t go for the fashion, then at least go for the spectacle of it all.

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by Henry Guyer
Gloobbi Fashion

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