how department stores are reinventing themselves

Les “cathedrals of modern commerce”this is how Émile Zola designated department stores. The keen observer of Second Empire society made him the central character of a novel that has gone down in history: To the happiness of the ladies, published in 1883. We could read this description: “But the factory heat with which the house burned came mainly from the sales, from the jostling of the counters, which we felt behind the walls. There was the continuous hum of the machine at work, a crowd of customers, crowded in front of the shelves, stunned under the goods, then thrown at the checkout. And this was settled, organized with mechanical rigor, a whole population of women passing through the force and logic of the gears. »

Nearly one hundred and fifty years later, here comes the great mag…