PARIS — A potion straight out of Alice in Wonderland must have soaked the foundations of 352 Rue Saint-Honoré.
After a previous occupant’s giant purse perched on a balcony, there‘s now a larger-than-life suit of armor’s helmet popping from the bright yellow facade that marks the location of Fauré Le Page’s flagship, the latest heritage coated-canvas specialist to land on this stretch of the tony shopping street.
Meanwhile, inside this 5,400-square-foot, three-level unit, a daisy has grown two stories tall. They are the latest additions to a building that underwent an extensive two-year remodeling that included refurbishing some of its original 18th-century features as well as connecting a street-level store with a previously separated monumental staircase and upper levels.
What Augustin de Buffévent, Fauré Le Page’s creative director, wanted was to create the impression of “a family home, bringing our memories into a place that’s already full of memories,” he told WWD during a visit.
Plenty come with the territory for a brand that had a first life as a gunmaker and swordsmith to France’s King Louis XV to its current era, revived as a leather goods specialist in 2009 by de Buffévent, a former Christian Dior executive.
In the entrance with its sweeping high ceiling, there are portraits of Louis Fauré and Eléonore Le Page, whose descendants took the double-barreled moniker. Above them swirls “Ciel de Poudre,” by father-and-son artist duo Dominique and Noé Bouillon, with its black speckling that nods to gunpowder floating in the air after firing.
Along the staircase, a case filled with pigments is an invitation to talk about the brand’s screen printings, with de Buffévent extolling about the color work, a complex exercise in balancing hues under different lighting conditions to ensure a consistent appearance for the finished items.
A first level contains the cashier’s desk and plenty of mementos — certificates as suppliers to Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia, tickets to the Comédie Française, family photographs and even a manuscript detailing its genealogy and stories, tools of the various trades and crafts practiced over the centuries.
At the top of the staircase, which de Buffévent said was a big draw in choosing the location and now comes with a banister by ironwork artist Romain Barré, who was also behind that giant daisy — there’s a succession of salons.
There’s the Salon des Quatre Saisons, with its original 18th-century painted artworks, with travel and more masculine styles; the Salon de Diane with its larger-than-life plaster cast created with the moldings studio of the Louvre of the statue of the goddess that sits in Versailles — with drawers for products, and then a library that will double as a VIP salon, filled with books mentioning the founding families and their wares.
Another room displays a rifle of French Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte’s younger brother Jérôme, continuing the mix between historical artifacts, commissioned ceramics and other artworks, and products.
Of course, there’s an abundant sampling of its 300 items, in particular bestselling lines such as the Double Battle with its dual carry options, the First Page hobo launched this year and the Daily Battle tote, which de Buffévent plans to further develop with more options and functions for the shape he describes as “a travel bag, a sports bag, a gym bag, a shopping bag, an office bag.”
Prices start around 300 euros for cardholders and go up to 790 euros for a 12-slot zippered wallet. Bags in canvas with a leather trim are priced from 1,200 euros for the Daily Battle 27, whose scale-like motif comes in seven colors, to 2,500 euros for a Ladies First in jacquard and leather. Its travel models hover around 2,000 euros.
Giving all this plenty of space was one of the impulses behind the move from Rue Cambon, where it has been since relaunch, to this new location, five times larger than the average 1,100-square-foot retail surface of its 11 other stores.
These include Hankyu Umeda in Osaka, Plaza Indonesia in Jakarta, the Dubai Mall in Dubai and a corner in Paris’ Galeries Lafayette Haussmann. This year, there have also been seven pop-ups.
Although the family-owned company did not disclose sales, it said revenues are divided roughly equally among Europe and the Americas combined, Asia, and the Middle East.
But on the other side of the landing, there’s a more unexpected feature: a playful game inspired by the historic shooting salons once associated with gunsmiths such as Lepage, who operated one near the Champs-Élysées in the 19th century.
De Buffévent said his intention was to keep the place from feeling static. “I like this dialogue between the two,” he said of the old and new. “I like when a place, a house, isn’t fixed; otherwise it becomes a museum.
“The archives should not be a limit. They are a source of inspiration, an exacting standard too, but they should never be a limit,” he said. Success, he added, comes from “a mix of archives, the air of the times and the codes of the house — you shake it all up, and something comes out.”
