Six months inside Printemps Haussmann

In 2025, ISLI was given a dedicated space at Printemps Haussmann in Paris, for six months.

A department store is not a boutique

Printemps Haussmann is one of the most iconic department stores in France. Its visitors are not there to find an independent accessories house. They arrive with their own reasons, and a stand has to hold its own inside that flow.

Six months is long enough to stop performing and start observing. Which shapes people reach for first. Which colours make someone stop mid-step. Which questions come up again and again, and in what order.

Appointments, not just a display

Throughout the residency, Karima also hosted private appointments. Clients could follow the design process from the beginning, understand where the leather comes from and why no two pieces are identical, and commission bespoke pieces.

Those conversations are the part that lasts. Explaining a construction to someone who is about to live with it forces a clarity that no product description ever will.

What it changed

Visibility, obviously. A studio of this size does not buy six months in a store like that.

The more useful outcome was the sharpening. Meeting an audience that owes you nothing is the fastest way to find out whether the work stands up on its own, without a brand story holding it together.

It did.