Since June 9, ELLE and Printemps New York have been transforming a café in the Financial District into a slice of the French Riviera. The French art of living becomes just another commodity there—and that’s the whole point.
At 1 Wall Street, the world’s most symbolically significant financial address, Printemps has opened its first U.S. location: fifty-five thousand square feet spread over two floors, with interiors designed by Laura Gonzales and a restaurant helmed by chef Gregory Gourdet, a three-time James Beard Award winner. It is in this setting that ELLE magazine has just launched a “French season,” running from June 9 through the end of August. The brand’s daytime café, Café Jalu, has gotten a makeover: yellow-and-white stripes, nods to the beaches of the French Riviera, signature macarons, and fresh-squeezed juices.
A Reconstructed Shore
The campaign embraces its staged nature. It’s not about evoking the Riviera but about reenacting it, with an abundance of references immediately recognizable to a New York audience: beach-style stripes, pastries, and the ritual of a leisurely morning. Café Jalu, moreover, already carries a piece of French history in its name: it pays homage to Augustine and Jules Jaluzot, founders of Printemps. The New York establishment presents itself as the heir to a century and a half of Parisian history, transplanted to the foot of the skyscrapers.
Starting in July, a pop-up shop will extend the installation, featuring a selection of ELLE merchandise and a limited-edition collection of sailor shirts designed in collaboration with Saint-James for the occasion. This detail is no accident: the striped sailor shirt—once the work uniform of Breton sailors and now a universal symbol of French fashion—embodies the very mechanism at work here. A popular, dated item, reimagined as an exportable national emblem.
The Art of Living as an Export Product
“ELLE has always been more than just a magazine brand,” says Anne Billaz, CEO of Lagardère Active Enterprises, who describes a vision for immersive experiences at the intersection of fashion, hospitality, and everyday life. The concept says it all: what’s being sold here is neither a magazine nor a piece of clothing, but an atmosphere. The café, the pinstripes, and the macaron are the vehicles for a broader idea—that of a French art of living packaged as an experience.
This can be seen as the logical next step in a brand expansion strategy. ELLE has more than eighty editions worldwide and has long been capitalizing on its name beyond newsstands—in hotels, cafés, and trade shows. Le Printemps, for its part, is playing the card of French-style luxury retail in New York—curated and artfully staged. The partnership between the two in Manhattan amounts to selling the idea of France to those who will never live there—in the city that, better than any other, knows how to buy into narratives.
There is nothing cynical about this approach; it is simply unapologetic. France has always exported its cultural imagery with as much consistency as its products, and the line between the two has never been clear-cut. What Café Jalu is showcasing this summer is this mechanism laid bare: a reconstructed Mediterranean shoreline in the shadow of Wall Street, a café as an embassy, a pinstripe as a passport. The question isn’t whether the illusion works, but how long it will last once summer is over.
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