PARIS — Sézane is marking a major brand overhaul with the opening of a temporary store on the Left Bank in Paris that showcases its fall 2026 collection alongside a full lifestyle offering, including its first in-store café and bookstore.
Cementing its presence on Rue du Bac, which is already home to a permanent Sézane store and the brand’s corporate headquarters, the company has taken over number 117, on the corner across from department store Le Bon Marché. The space was formerly home to the Conran store and most recently housed a Zara Home pop-up.
It’s familiar territory for founder Morgane Sézalory, who used to live on the street before moving her offices there in 2021.
The opportunity to take over this stretch of Saint-Germain-des-Prés for six months felt like the perfect way to ring in a new chapter for the label, which recently unveiled a new logo and website, in tandem with an upscaled collection that adds a dash of Scandi cool to its signature vintage-inspired French girl style.
“I really wanted us to have a space where we could bring to life and make tangible everything I’d been working on for the past two years. It felt perfect to have a place that would function as a blank canvas and a laboratory,” she told WWD in an interview.
The Sézane pop-up on Rue du Bac in Paris.
Courtesy of Sézane
Signaling its presence, Sézane has dotted the facade with seven large-scale photographs by James Barnor, a pioneer of photojournalism in Ghana, whose work is also displayed throughout the store in spaces including the changing rooms and a lounge area, where a documentary film is projected on the walls.
The 3,700-square-foot boutique, designed by Sézalory and her in-house team, combines a tobacco color palette with materials like lacquered wood. Window displays feature clothing and accessories alongside vintage items sourced for her interiors line, Les Composantes.
The store offers a selection of items from the fall collection, which marks a departure from the label’s girly aesthetic with oversized leather jackets and coats, chunky knits and soft leather tote bags.
The Bigger Picture
Sézane has partnered with Ten Belles, a Paris-based sustainable and socially responsible sourdough bakery and specialty coffee roaster, and bookstore Galignani on a corner offering drinks and pastries alongside a selection of titles spanning fashion, art and design.
All net proceeds from book sales will go toward Demain, a social impact program founded by Sézalory that supports global charities helping women and children, and the nonprofit Libraries Without Borders.
Sézalory said her brand rethink was triggered by her mother’s bout with illness two years ago, which prompted her to reflect on her journey as an entrepreneur, from selling vintage items on eBay to founding Sézane in 2013 and turning it into a successful digitally native fashion brand.
“Sézane grew out of a series of lucky coincidences and choices that were never mapped out with a clear destination in mind, because I’m self-taught,” she explained. “I had never allowed myself to step back and see the bigger picture.”
Her soul-searching coincided with a market shift that has seen midtier fashion brands squeezed, as demand has polarized toward high-end luxury brands or trend-driven fast-fashion players, prompting many high street chains to introduce more sophisticated offerings.
A bookshop curated by Galignani and a café by Ten Belles at the Sézane pop-up boutique in Paris.
Courtesy of Sézane
Having achieved a cult-like following with its limited-edition collection drops of $110 Tomboy shirts and $120 Gaspard cardigans, Sézane sold minority shares in the company to U.S. equity firm General Atlantic in 2018 and Téthys Invest, a subsidiary of the holding company of the Bettencourt-Meyers family, in 2022.
As the contemporary brand opened stores in France, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S., some of its highly engaged customers expressed disenchantment over the loss of its in-the-know cachet and a perceived drop in the quality of some items.
Sézalory noted that few brand founders would choose to hit the brakes at a time when the company was logging 30 percent growth a year, but she felt it was important to return to the fundamentals of the label’s success by focusing on fewer references, sourcing the best materials, and amplifying the customer experience in stores.
Hitting Pause
Sézane, which was certified B Corp in 2021, operates 27 locations worldwide, including six permanent stores in the U.S. in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, in addition to pop-ups in cities such as Dallas, Boston and Atlanta.
However, it continues to do 85 percent of its revenues online, keeping overheads low, and Sézalory ruled out expanding into wholesale.
“It’s always been a very healthy business, but I decided to deliberately slow down to think everything through consciously for the first time,” she said. “That means rethinking the collections first and foremost, the visual identity, the imagery, the architecture, the service and the experience — not simply updating them, but reinventing them.”
Morgane Sézalory
Courtesy of Sézane
In line with the brand’s tradition of sending surprise gifts with some online orders, customers at the Rue du Bac boutique will receive a tote bag personalized with their initials as a gift with purchase during the first week.
The store boasts a sweater bar, with smaller sections for white shirts and denim. Another area carries vintage items such as scarves, midcentury ceramic pitchers and lithographs alongside lamps, cushions and candles from the Composantes homeware range.
(Starting on Sept. 21, Sézane plans to hold monthly online vintage clothing sales, which will also benefit the Demain foundation.)
The permanent Sézane store across the street is now dedicated to the October men’s line, which represents 10 percent of overall sales, and Petit Sézane childrenswear. Without disclosing specific plans, Sézalory said she sees a lot of room to grow the various categories. “I feel like we’ve only reached a fraction of our potential,” she mused.
Barnor’s work has been on display since the opening of the first Sézane store, dubbed L’Appartement, in the second arrondissement of Paris in 2015. Now the brand is deepening its commitment to culture with the publication of its first photography book, dedicated to the 97-year-old photographer’s work.
The pop-up space will serve as a template for future openings, including a planned one-year renovation of the original boutique on Rue Saint-Fiacre, although Sézalory pledged to be selective in her choice of stand-alone store locations.
“We don’t have a conventional retail strategy, because that isn’t our core business, so if we open a space, it has to have meaning and a little something extra — otherwise, we won’t do it,” she said.
