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Paris is welcoming a new Fashion and culture hub with Le Grand Magasin Éphémère
A crossroads of trends and discoveries in the heart of the capital
January 21st, 2025
From January 23 to June 29, Paris will have the honor of hosting a new arrival: the Grand Magasin Éphémère. Located at the intersection of fashion, art, and design, and bringing together several activities – such as shopping, exhibitions, a library, a cafeteria, and workshops – this new opening already promises to become an essential meeting point for Paris, its residents, and visitors eager to make the most of what the French capital has to offer. A true crossroads of cultures and trends, the Grand Magasin Éphémère spans over two floors, thoughtfully designed to create a bridge between discovery and relaxation. While the ground floor offers a café, a pop-up area, a bookstore, and the multi-brand space of Communauté Internationale (a federation celebrating independent brands inspired by countercultures) for a relaxed atmosphere, the first floor is dedicated to an exhibition and workshop space, leading to another multi-brand space hosted by Matières Premières (which gathers a new generation of designers eager to shift the planet's gravity toward a new definition of the universal) on the second floor.
In these multi-brand spaces, you’ll find brands such as Patta, Abela, Kids of Immigrants, Free The Youth, and Lack of Guidance for Communauté Internationale, as well as Kartik Research, Studio de Lostanges, Reward If Found, and Fichu represented at Matières Premières. Between the two, an exhibition space by La galerie publique will host, in collaboration with the Magnin-a gallery, a retrospective of the works by renowned photographers Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé, including a photoshoot taken at the Barbès metro station for the TATI 50x50 magazine (1998). "The idea behind Grand Magasin Éphémère aligns with our goal of creating a cultural space focused on the diasporas and African cultures,” explains Youssouf Fofana, founder of the Union de la Jeunesse Internationale, the organization behind this project. "Presenting the works of Keïta and Sidibé in this neighborhood, at the heart of the communities concerned, reinforces our approach. It’s a way of saying: this place belongs to us, here is the culture it emanates."
In addition to the meetings and workshops offered by the Grand Magasin Éphémère, visitors can enjoy carefully selected books available from the Random Access Library. A bookstore conceived as a Taxiphone also sells a series of publications chosen by KD Presse. To design the various spaces, the Union de la Jeunesse Internationale collaborated with ciguë, an architecture and thinking collective founded in 2003 in Montreuil, as well as Matthieu Prat of the Diplomates agency and Simon Chaouat. During creative sessions with Youssouf Fofana and his team, the idea of a scenography where the building's foundations would serve as a base for the retail spaces emerged. The reuse of raw materials – such as these metal racks supported by layers of concrete that echo the elevated metro viaduct – highlights the ephemeral nature of the space. If all these reasons haven’t convinced you to make the Grand Magasin Éphémère your headquarters, it will be waiting for you starting this Friday, January 23, to change your mind.
The Grand Magasin Éphémère will be open from January 23 to June 29, 2025, Wednesday to Sunday from 11:30 AM to 7:00 PM, located at 2 Boulevard Marguerite de Rochechouart, 75018 PARIS