For six months in 2025, ISLI had a home inside Printemps Haussmann, at 64 boulevard Haussmann in Paris. Not a shelf, not a pop-up weekend: a dedicated space in one of France's most iconic department stores, where visitors could walk into our universe without knowing our name.
Six months on the most demanding floor in Paris
Printemps is where the great houses stand side by side, and the residency placed our pieces a few steps from windows that have seen a century of fashion. For a young studio, that neighbourhood is a test: the display had to hold its own, every day, in front of an audience that sees the best of what the city sells.
Our corner carried the full vocabulary of the studio: the earrings in their bright boxes, the bags on their stands, the colours doing what they always do. People slowed down, came closer, asked questions. Six months leaves time for something a one-week event never allows: visitors who came back.
Appointments with Karima
Throughout the residency, founder Karima Bidar hosted special appointments in the space. Clients sat down with her, walked through the design process from the first drawing to the assembled piece, and could commission bespoke pieces of their own.
Those conversations are the part we kept most carefully. A department store measures footfall; we measured the people who wanted to know how a piece is made, and who left owning something drawn for them alone.
What it changed
Since its launch, ISLI has grown through an independent model in which creation, production and distribution evolve in close dialogue. The residency at Printemps proved that this model can stand in the most institutional setting French retail has to offer, without giving up the artisanal identity that makes the work worth doing.