What: Printemps opens "Pas à Pas: La chaussure sous tous ses angles," a free exhibition of more than 200 historical and contemporary shoes under its Haussmann dome, running through October 28.

Why it is important: As the first major cultural moment staged under new CEO Rémy Baume, the show signals how incoming leadership uses curation to set an early strategic tone around discovery and culture.

Under its historic stained-glass dome, Printemps has brought together more than 200 historical and contemporary shoes for "Pas à Pas: La chaussure sous tous ses angles," organized into 11 sections exploring footwear as a functional object, fashion accessory and object of desire. General curator Sylvie Marot and scientific curator Marlène Van de Casteele assembled the show without an in-house collection or acquisitions budget, drawing instead on loans from specialist institutions — including the Shoes or No Shoes Museum in Belgium and the Musée des Métiers de la Chaussure in France — private collectors such as Olivier Jault, fashion houses and Printemps' own archives. Contributing houses include Alaïa, Balenciaga, Dior, Gucci, Jean Paul Gaultier, Louis Vuitton, Maison Margiela and Vivienne Westwood, with many pieces displayed alongside one another for the first time.

For the third consecutive year, Printemps paired the exhibition with its ESMOD student prize, asking students to reinterpret a Saison 1865 loafer; Camille Laveran's winning "Double Billie" design will be produced and sold at Printemps from spring 2027. The exhibition runs until October 28.

IADS Notes: "Pas à Pas" is the third consecutive year Printemps has anchored a free exhibition under its stained-glass dome to a broader cultural strategy, following earlier editions built around handbags and jackets and echoing the format used for "Primavera, l'art à la mode," which paired the store's 1920s-30s design-studio archives with contemporary fashion (Fashion Network, January 2025). The show also marks the first major cultural moment staged under new chief executive Rémy Baume, who joined in June 2026 tasked with strategic renewal after a nine-month leadership gap (WWD, June 2026), succeeding Jean-Marc Bellaiche, whose five-year tenure had centred on international expansion and a pivot toward experiential retail (Fashion Network, September 2025). The reliance on loans from specialist museums, private collectors and fashion houses rather than an in-house collection or acquisitions budget mirrors the approach when the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris drew on Printemps', Le Bon Marché's and Galeries Lafayette's own archives for its 2024 retrospective on the birth of the department store (Fashion Network, February 2024). The exhibition's ESMOD partnership, for its part, extends a format already in its second year when it focused on bags, pairing a student prize with a co-branded piece sold in-store (Fashion United, September 2025).

Printemps opens "Pas à Pas," a 200-shoe history exhibition