A Lemaire store is built to feel like visiting the house of your most tasteful friend. Everything is perfectly balanced; the brand’s gorgeous leather Croissant Bags, in all their many sizes, sit just so next to a single wooden chair or, perhaps, a fleshy “olfactory object.” It’s domestic bliss as retail dreamland, the kind of place I’d love to live and die in. 

Step into Lemaire’s Elzévir flagship in Paris, for example, and you can walk on Moroccan Bejmat tiles and buy a perfectly tailored jacket. Or, for the next few weeks, simply stop by to see the best surrealism exhibition in the city: “Je dors beaucoup (I Sleep a Lot).” 

The exhibition features works by late French artist Roland Topor and sculptor Karine Marques Ferreira, but goes one step further. Instead of a post-show gift shop with a few cheap postcards and a screen-printed tote bag, Lemaire’s take on an art exhibition integrates a full capsule collection — skirts, boots, and other pieces that translate Topor’s drawings and illustrations into wearable art. 

This strategy of bridging art and commerce feels distinct to Lemaire, and we have two people to thank for that: Sarah-Linh Tran, Lemaire’s co-artistic director, and Jos Auzende, the brand's quietly influential exhibition curator and editorial designer since 2019. 

The duo has co-curated projects like this for years, with Auzende bringing her art-world knowledge to the brand. (She previously served as lead curator at the Gaîté Lyrique cultural center.) Over the past few years, Lemaire stores have shown everything from Joseph E. Yoakum’s landscape paintings to Noviadi Angkasapura’s drawings and Carlos Peñafiel’s sculptures, with each show accompanied by a tightly edited collection of clothes. 

It’s an approach that might’ve once flown under the radar, but fashion is a new Wild West as brands try to stem the bleed of slow sales by establishing a bit of cultural relevance outside of clothes. That’s translated into an intense cycle of culturemogging, where Louis Vuitton is out here financially supporting art institutions (via stale, squiggly Keith Haring handbags) or clogging the canals of Venice with Biennale brand tie-ins. 

Lemaire’s reputation for being tapped-in, meanwhile, is built on actually being tapped-in. You can’t astroturf that kind of cred. When you walk into a Lemaire shop and find works by an underrated surrealist artist scattered around the store, including on actual clothing, it doesn’t feel random or hollow — it feels like a perfect fit. 

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