From left: the elegant private showroom of Joseph Duclos on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré; designer Violante Nessi in her London salon BY APPOINTMENT ONLY The evolution towards a more personalised shopping experience has been turbo-charged in the wake of the pandemic. Mark C O’Flaherty reports on fashion’s renewed love affair with the private showroom There are two doors into the Joseph Duclos boutique on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. A select few enter by the rear, where they are taken down into a private room-within-a-room on the lower level and poured a glass of champagne while creative director Ramesh Nair shows them swatches of extraordinary jewel-coloured exotic skins. The rest of the store is like an art gallery – all white and light – but this space is furnished like an Edwardian library. The contrast is so strong, it could be an artist’s installation – a reference to a space that existed at some point elsewhere in Paris, in the past. “We pull the curtains closed and it PHOTOS FROM LEFT: MARIE-LINE SINA, COURTESY VIOLANTE NESSI 66
We pull the curtains closed and it isolates you totally. This is where you come if you are a movie star or royalty and want to see what we can make for you — Ramesh Nair, Joseph Duclos isolates you totally,” says Nair. “This is where you come if you are a movie star or royalty and want to see what we can make for you.” For some clients, that means having a crocodile, lizard or ostrich skin dyed a specific colour, and then insisting that shade never be reproduced. The handbags produced by Duclos are often truly one of a kind. “Some clients want a 24-carat gold closure, others want the final product to be hand-delivered on a private jet,” says Nair. The private library at Duclos, a few doors down from the Hermès mothership, is indicative of the future of a certain kind of luxury. E-commerce has hammered nail after nail into the coffin of the department store, and we live in a totally different world from the one in which Yves Saint Laurent became the first designer to open a ready-to-wear store under his own name. Until then, in 1966, the world of luxury fashion was defined by couture and closed doors. Saint Laurent created something new. “I’d had enough of making dresses for jaded billionaires,” he said at the time. “My women are from harems, castles and even the suburbs; they are all over the streets, subways, dime stores and stock exchanges.” Saint Laurent would make his vision accessible to all who could afford it. The client base was self-selecting. If you were going to YSL to buy something, you knew about Yves, what he represented, and you were making a nuanced statement. Today, luxury has been distilled into heavily branded goods. A lot of people literally queuing for them resell what they can get access to, for a profit. A car loses at least ten per cent of its value the moment you drive it out of the showroom, while certain designer bags are worth 130 per cent of their original retail value once purchased. For fashion to survive, it has to adapt. And just as Saint Laurent turned things upside down in the 1960s, so certain designers are shaking up the retail model today. The heavy hitters in luxury have restricted access to much of their product for years, and recently increased the price of key items to make them even less accessible. It’s a way to stop the saturation of the market, but it’s also necessary because of chaotic fluctuations in currency markets. When Brexit crushed the pound in the UK in 2016, most brands immediately raised prices to stop London from becoming, effectively, one big discount warehouse for overseas shoppers. Now luxury brands are physically restricting the routes available to clients to buy their goods. But just as luxury represents a journey, that new route looks a lot like the difference between first class and economy. New stores are by invitation and appointment only. Brunello Cucinelli has opened branches of Casa Cucinelli in London, New York, Paris and Milan. Cucinelli is seen by many as the go-to for the perfect simple cashmere sweater, but he is keen to expand on that with his appointment-only stores that sell a whole universe. It’s meant to feel like walking into a private home rather than a shop, but one where you can buy everything from nutcrackers to napkins, lobster shears and Mahjong sets. And, of course, cashmere. If a retail space is appointment-only, it may intimidate some, but not the core clientele: a small percentage of the world that takes its consumption of fashion and accessories very seriously. In her 2019 book, Fashionopolis, Dana Thomas describes the scene at the appointment-only Moda Operandi in Belgravia, co-founded by former Vogue contributing editor Laura 67
