Serving up both fashion and innovation, the window displays have always been instrumental in setting the scene, with aspirational designs to tempt customers into the store. Since its inauguration in October 1912, the flagship Galeries Lafayette has remained true to its byword – offering the “best merchandise in all of Paris”. That evening stroll turned out to be another Parisian urban pleasure for sure.
That particular evening I strolled around the part of the Boulevard Haussmann between Chaussée d’Antin et Havre Caumartin metro stations in the 9th area, where the famous Printemps and Galeries Lafayettes department stores are located, and behind and around the Paris Opera Garnier, past the then dormant Apple store. How Parisians seem to make impeccable beauty and harmony look effortless, both during the day and at night totally eludes me. Sure it is more silent, footsteps echo on the cobble stone streets, yet the moonlight and the symphony of the lights adorning the magnificent buildings provide strollers with a different kind of energy to move. The crowds thin out, another kind of “fête des lumières” takes center stage and the city becomes a different kind of museum. Paris does not simply fall asleep after the sun sets. The change of ambiance is drastic, but not jarring. The area that is mobbed by people traffic during the day, Parisians and tourists storming in and out of the department stores, roads busy with tourist buses, taxis, bankers, professionals charging ahead, puffing on their cigarettes, definitely goes through a metamorphosis after the sun falls asleep. Today his name is kept alive on a very busy avenue, Boulevard Haussmann, a 2.5 kilometre (1.57 mi) long tree-lined avenue stretching from the 8th to the 9th arrondissement, home to the big department stores, familiar brands, solid yet ornate bank buildings and the headquarters of the French daily newspaper, Le Figaro. This restructuring of Paris, establishing the foundation of long, straight boulevards with cafés and shops creating a new type of urban scenario was undertaken by the then Seine prefect, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, between 18. Paris became what it is today under the “Haussmann Plan”, which was basically a renovation program commissioned by Napoléon III who apparently decided to modernize Paris after seeing London, a city transformed by the Industrial Revolution, encompassing all aspects of urban planning from large open parks to a complete sewer system. My nocturnal stroll on the last evening of January is testimony to the fact that even this initiative to reduce waste and save energy does not seem to have frayed the historical banner of “La Ville Lumiere”. I believe Paris also holds its “city of lights” tag from the “wattage” point of view even after a nationwide”lights-out” law which became effective Mid 2013 forcing shops and other buildings to switch off their lights every evening, between 1am and 7 am, in a bid to save energy. And this self-commendatory motto is used by Parisians today to convey the magnificence of the city as still being the cultural and material beacon to the world. Paris is famed as “La Ville Lumière ” due to its reference as the birthplace of the Age of Enlightenment – the center of education and ideas throughout Europe in the in late 17th- and 18th-centuries.
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