PARIS - After a nine-month interregnum, the storied French department store Printemps has named Rémy Baume as its new chief executive. Baume arrives from Zadig & Voltaire, the bohemian-luxe label he helmed from 2020 until this past winter, bringing a résumé that bridges investment banking, consulting, and the delicate architecture of retail. His appointment arrives as the group - 18 doors in France, plus outposts in Doha and New York - seeks to refine its position across luxury, fashion, beauty, and e-commerce. Baume's trajectory reads like a masterclass in modern commerce: a start at Morgan Stanley and McKinsey, a directorship at LVMH (the conglomerate that has long shaped how we covet), then a strategic pivot at Carrefour, where he oversaw non-food transformation. In 2013, he turned to fashion as CEO of Kidiliz Group, a childrenswear specialist, before Zadig & Voltaire called. Now he inherits a maison that, since its 1865 founding, has been a crucible of retail innovation - the first to install electric lighting, the first to offer a mail-order catalog, and, fittingly, a pioneer in the display of lingerie as a desirable commodity rather than a hidden necessity. "Retail is reinventing itself," Baume noted, "but novelty, pleasure, quality, and hospitality remain its essential drivers." Those words resonate particularly for the Lingerie Museum, where we trace how the department store's early 20th-century corset fittings and silk stockings displays transformed intimate apparel from utilitarian underlayer into an emblem of personal expression. Baume's challenge: to write a new chapter for an institution that has always known that the most intimate details of fashion - much like the lingerie we archive - are anything but trivial.
Originally reported by WWD