Ephemeral stores are trendy. Converse opened such a store at 55 rue Saintonge in Paris (it’s actually so ephemeral that although I went up and down the street twice I couldn’t find it) and while at the department store Le Printemps I discovered they opened an ephemeral restaurant (restaurant Pouchkine) in the basement.

Printemps is only a few minutes’ walk away from Place Vendôme and the most famous 5-star hotels which compete against each other to get the best chefs. Pastry chefs are meanwhile celebrated and have gotten a VIP status and restaurant Pouchkine was proposing a range of pastry “creations” in limited editions (you can see immediately the semantic link with the world of fashion and haute-couture, don’t you?).

The customer experience was very much aligned with the wording since, as you can see from the pictures, the architecture was inspired by fashion shows.

My take:

Outrageous prices, super trendy and definitely cool … I’m just wondering whether it’s profitable given that you hardly have time to amortize the fixed costs of the installation