paris

Kayali Café at Sephora Champs-Élysées: the gourmand retail experience speaking to Gen Z

3 September 2026 by Flora

As part of our retail tours, the Lemens & Partners team visited the Kayali Café pop-up at Sephora Champs-Élysées, open until 25 August. Founded in 2018 by Mona Kattan, whose name translates as “my imagination” in Arabic.

A universe designed to seduce

Everything is pink. A giant Boujee Kitty Caramel Milk flacon greets the visitor at the entrance. On the wall, the message: “Awaken your imagination.” The space is immediately recognisable, coherent and instagrammable.

At the heart of the concept are the Paires Gourmandes, Gourmand Pairings. Each fragrance is associated with a pastry presented under a glass cloche: fruit macaron, cherry black forest, vanilla tarte tatin, fresh fruit tart. This is not a conventional fragrance counter, it is an imaginary pâtisserie, designed to seduce the nose as much as the eye.

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Why it works with Gen Z

Kayali has built its identity around “layering”, the art of combining several fragrances to create your own signature scent. It is an invitation to co-create rather than simply purchase. And that is precisely where the brand resonates with Gen Z, the product becomes a tool for personal expression, not an imposed reference.

Kayali also speaks the right language. Fragrances are not classified by traditional olfactory families, but by moods, gourmand, fresh, cosy, fruity. An intuitive and immediate way to choose your scent, no expertise required.

The result: an olfactory playground in an entirely pink space, instagrammable by nature, where visitors come as much for the experience as for the product.

What this tells us about the future of retail

The brands that perform with Gen Z are not necessarily those that do the most but those that speak to them best. They are the ones that create a space in which the visitor feels understood, welcomed, and free to build their own experience.

At Lemens & Partners, we design and lead bespoke retail tours to help you observe what works elsewhere and build the retail of tomorrow. We also support companies in recruiting the creative profiles capable of bringing these experiences to life.

Retail tour, recruitment, or simply a conversation? Get in touch: contact@lemensandpartners.com

The Champs-Élysées: a playground for sport and lifestyle

19 June 2026 by Flora

As part of our retail tours, the Lemens & Partners team observed two retail activations on the Champs-Élysées: PSG Café and the Wilson Tennis Garden pop-up, two sports brands that are building much more than just a product. The Champs-Élysées has always been a showcase. Sport is establishing itself there as a brand culture, a way of life and an experience in its own right.

PSG Café: when a football club becomes a home

Part of the PSG boutique on the Champs-Élysées, the PSG Café offers much more than just a coffee break. Cups emblazoned with the logo, branded glasses, madeleines in the club’s colours, drinks with evocative names (PSG Spritz, PSG Spirit) and a carefully selected Rwanda Women Coffee. To take away or enjoy on the premises, in a sleek, minimalist white space.

It is a branded café, designed for an international audience, catering to tourists as well as supporters. The MyParis loyalty programme extends the experience beyond a one-off visit: discounts, access to PSG TV, a gaming zone and family offers. In this way, the club is building a community, not just a customer base.

PSG no longer just sells shirts. It sells a Parisian lifestyle.

Wilson Tennis Garden: Roland-Garros comes to Galeries Lafayette on the Champs-Élysées

At the entrance to Galeries Lafayette on the Champs-Élysées, Wilson has set up its Tennis Garden. As soon as you enter, the floor transforms into a red clay court. A corridor lined with large black-and-white photographs of legendary tennis players leads to a green dome covered in ivy, at the heart of which the Wilson tennis clothing collection is on display.

This pop-up has been set up to coincide with the French Open, which took place from 24 May to 7 June. Wilson, the tournament’s official equipment supplier since 2020, is capitalising on the tournament’s momentum to establish itself in a new light: no longer simply as an equipment supplier, but as a style brand.

Wilson no longer sells just equipment. It sells the elegance of tennis.

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What this tells us about the future of retail

PSG and Wilson are using sport as a starting point to build a brand universe that extends far beyond the original product.

Whether it’s coffee, fashion, lifestyle or community, sport has become one of the most powerful drivers of experiential retail. And the Champs-Élysées, with its constant flow of international visitors, is the ideal setting to demonstrate this.

Designing these spaces requires creative professionals capable of simultaneously considering brand identity, spatial design and the visitor’s emotional experience. These are the talents that Lemens & Partners helps to find every day.

Retail tours have become essential for tracking trends, innovating and drawing inspiration. Lemens & Partners analyses global retail movements through the lens of your strategic challenges, observing what works elsewhere to help shape the retail of tomorrow.

We design and lead bespoke retail tours with our international experts. The field is an endless source of ideas.

Get in touch to organise your next retail tour.

Etam Summer Club: A Parisian flagship store takes to the seaside

3 June 2026 by Flora

As part of our retail tours, the Lemens & Partners team observed a retail activation at the Etam Haussmann flagship store in Paris.

Visible from dozens of metres away on the street, it’s hard to miss. Etam has transformed its Paris flagship store into a veritable summer retreat with its Summer Club, a kiosk set up overnight, both in the shop window and inside the store.

Blue and white stripes, a customised Fiat 500, a map of the Côte d’Azur stretching from Marseille to Monaco, and a life-size beach hut. You’re not just walking into a shop, you’re setting off for the South.

The Summer Club doesn’t just sell swimwear. It sells the promise of a holiday. And it all begins long before you step inside the shop.

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We design and lead bespoke retail tours with our international experts. The field is an endless source of ideas.

Get in touch to organise your next retail tour.

BONBONBON Bonduelle

26 May 2026 by Flora

How do you reinvent a product that’s already sitting in almost everyone’s cupboard? Bonduelle’s answer, turn it into a pop-up experience that’s colourful, playful, and surprisingly cool. After testing the concept with a first street-side shop in Villeneuve-d’Ascq last year, the brand brought its cheerful green universe to the heart of Paris this spring.

Part grocery shop, part restaurant, part creative experience, the Bonduelle BONBONBON Pop-Up gives visitors a fresh way to look at canned and preserved foods. Styled like a fun little “supermarket,” the space mixes iconic products with newly launched ranges, while showing just how versatile these everyday staples can be.

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And the real surprise? You can actually taste everything on site. The restaurant area serves freshly prepared dishes inspired by street-food culture, transforming humble canned vegetables into colourful, flavour-packed creations that feel anything but ordinary.

It’s a playful reminder that even the most familiar cupboard essentials can still surprise you.

We design and lead bespoke retail tours with our international experts. The field is an endless source of ideas.

Get in touch to organise your next retail tour.

Prada Beauty & The Ordinary at the entrances of Galeries Lafayette

22 May 2026 by Flora

As part of our retail tours, the Lemens & Partners team visited Galeries Lafayette Haussmann during the “Quelles Beautés!” operation. Two pop-ups, two entrances, two radically opposing universes and yet, a remarkably similar message.

Galeries Lafayette Paris Haussmann has inaugurated the largest beauty space in France. In this spirit, the GL launched the Quelles Beautés! operation, running until May 31st 2026. Transforming the store into a creative platform for brands. Two of them were each given an entrance of their own: Prada Beauty and The Ordinary. Two entirely different retail languages, and yet a shared objective.

The Prada Beauty Market

Light wooden crates, fresh fruit, a yellow and white striped awning, springtime market furniture. Prada Beauty chose to make itself accessible in the most literal sense by installing a Spring Market. After a first installation in the 7th arrondissement from 4th to 10th May, the concept moved to Galeries Lafayette Haussmann until May 31st.

The Spring Market humanises the brand, makes it tactile, seasonal, almost familiar. The scenography does what the product alone cannot: it shifts perception.

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The Ordinary Pop-Up

On the other side, The Ordinary plays the opposite hand. Chrome pedestals, oversized packaging, a laboratory atmosphere all to present the new Volufiline 92% + Pal-Isoleucine 1% serum. A brand born online, built on transparency and fair pricing, now giving itself a physical presence.

The scenography makes no attempt to imitate luxury. Instead, it asserts a different form of desirability: that of proven efficacy, framed within a resolutely scientific identity.

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Prada humanises itself to move closer to the consumer. The Ordinary theatricalises itself to speak to the consumer differently. In both cases, it is the scenography that does the work of perceptual repositioning not the product, not the price.

Designing these spaces requires profiles capable of thinking simultaneously about brand strategy, scenography and the visitor’s emotional experience. Talent at the intersection of several disciplines, and increasingly at the heart of the recruitment missions we lead.

We design and lead bespoke retail tours with our international experts. The field is an endless source of ideas.

Get in touch to organise your next retail tour.

Massimo Dutti in Paris: a pop-up as a way of life

24 April 2026 by Flora

From 17 to 27 April 2026, Spanish brand Massimo Dutti opened an ephemeral pop-up at 7 rue Froissart, in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris. A space visited by the Lemens & Partners team as part of our retail tours.

Far more than a boutique

This is not a conventional ready-to-wear pop-up. It is a living space, considered in every detail, where fashion, design, a bookshop and a café coexist naturally.

The Limited Edition collection, an embodiment of Quiet Luxury, unfolds within a calm and refined environment. The garments, predominantly in shades of white and beige, echo the Pantone Colour of the Year 11-4201 Cloud Dancer. A visual coherence that is anything but accidental.

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A space designed as a gallery

Throughout the visit, the eye is drawn to design objects and furniture carefully selected from the Jacques Lacoste and Patrick Seguin galleries. Pieces that speak just as eloquently as the clothes themselves.

A library space, created in collaboration with the Yvon Lambert bookshop, punctuates the journey with art and architecture titles. A discreet café corner completes the picture, in partnership with Café Nuances, known for their matcha and their four Parisian addresses.

The floral compositions by designer Nina Charles provide the final touch: something living, something sensorial, something organic within a very considered space.

The privilege of the ephemeral

What makes this pop-up so effective is the feeling it creates in the visitor. The sense of being somewhere accessible only for a matter of days, offering pieces that are near impossible to find elsewhere. A limited product, in a limited-time setting, it is an equation that generates desire naturally.

What this tells us about the future of retail

This pop-up illustrates a trend we observe increasingly on our retail tours: brands seeking to move upmarket are no longer doing so solely through price or product, but through the environment they build around them. Choosing one’s partners, a bookshop, a gallery, a coffee roaster, a floral designer, is itself an act of positioning.

To conceive this kind of experience, you need creative profiles capable of thinking well beyond the garment. Art directors, scenographers, retail managers with a genuine culture of design. The kind of talent we help find every day.

We design and lead bespoke retail tours with our international experts. The field is an endless source of ideas.

Get in touch to organise your next retail tour.

Kayali Café at Sephora Champs-Élysées: the gourmand retail experience speaking to Gen Z

The Champs-Élysées: a playground for sport and lifestyle

PSG Café: when a football club becomes a home

Wilson Tennis Garden: Roland-Garros comes to Galeries Lafayette on the Champs-Élysées

Etam Summer Club: A Parisian flagship store takes to the seaside

BONBONBON Bonduelle

Massimo Dutti in Paris: a pop-up as a way of life

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