Mon Amour: A New Documentary and Pop-Up Souvenir Shop Celebrate the Legacy of Colette Paris
For anyone who was there for the closing of Colette—easily the most beloved and influential store of our generation—the evening of December 20, 2017, went down as an immeasurably fond farewell. Everyone was smiling or crying (or smiling and crying); everyone was simultaneously celebrating and mourning; everyone was cheering “Co-lette, Co-lette, Co-lette!” It was hard to accept that the doors would not reopen the following day—and that the store’s inimitable mother-daughter team of Colette Roussaux and Sarah Andelman would not be back to work as usual.
But if the store now belongs to the past, the story of its final months has been revived through Colette Mon Amour, a heartfelt documentary directed by Hugues Lawson-Body that will be screened for five nights in Paris to coincide with Fashion Week. And because a Colette experience would not be complete without some collectible merch, a Colette Mon Amour pop-up shop has taken over the Maison Kitsuné Tuileries boutique located barely 200 steps from the legendary address of 213 rue Saint Honoré.
Just don’t call it a Colette comeback, for even though Andelman, the store’s creative force, was involved in the making of both projects, they have been produced and supported by Highsnobiety, the ever-expanding media brand that David Fischer launched in 2005 with an article about, you guessed it, Colette. True to Andelman’s way of connecting people, she suggested that Fischer and Jérôme Denis of La Pac Films join forces with Lawson-Body and his sister, producer Eliane Lawson-Body, upon realizing that two documentaries were being made simultaneously.
After a private screening for friends and family in December on the two-year anniversary of the closure, a screening in London during the men’s shows, and another in New York earlier this month—which included the first of the pop-ups in a Kith boutique—Colette Mon Amour’s official debut in Paris feels particularly poignant.
“Colette was a store like no other, which you can especially see now when people walk out of the screening with tears in their eyes and, in general, very emotional reactions,” noted Fischer by email. “It was a store that was about much more than shopping; it was a meeting place for a certain community, and that is missing now. I think that is why ultimately everybody is so excited to get a piece of it back through the documentary and the associated activations.”
Yesterday, as the store prepared to open, a line formed down the street in a way that was reminiscent of so many mornings throughout Colette’s 20-year run. Following an all-night installation (also quintessentially Colette) overseen by the Highsnobiety team, mother and daughter arrived to check out the Colette-not-Colette ambience and appeared relaxed and remarkably hands-off. Surrounded by nods to the concept store—and slightly taken aback when she lit one of the famous fig-scented candles that have been rereleased in Colette Mon Amour pots—Andelman pointed out the deliberate absence of the two signature blue dots that were used to denote Colette in all its forms. “It’s fun to make these items connected to the film, but this is not about Colette as a stand-alone product,” she explained. “We were not a brand; we were a place. And when we closed, I always said we were turning the page.”
The one-hour film, meanwhile, makes clear how difficult it has been for the rest of us to do the same. Lawson-Body scored some mega testimonials from the likes of Kanye West, Virgil Abloh, Pharrell Williams, Chitose Abe, and Brian Donnelly (aka Kaws), plus, of course, anecdotes from several members of the Colette team (some working there since the earliest days) and a hodgepodge of customers—all of whom expressed varying degrees of awe, admiration, and genuine love. (Full disclosure: I appear for a total of 15 seconds.) While the catchiest lines come from West (“Colette was the internet before the internet”) and Williams (“If you want to buy the future, you come here”), another voice emerges in the form of crayon-like animated illustrations by Pierre Dixsaut that annotate the film with a cheeky flourish. A blue tear streams down West’s cheek; lightning bolts shoot from Andelman’s eyes; Balenciaga-esque sunglasses land on Roussaux’s face. “Colette has been a source of inspiration to all of us,” said Hugues. “We decided to give homage to graphics because Colette was also a graphic place. And what results is fun, cool, colorful, and pop—which is exactly Colette.”
And that eternal question of “Who is Colette?” gets answered more than it ever previously has, when Roussaux, who is notoriously averse to the spotlight, finally sits for an interview alongside Andelman, who smiles with a touching combination of reserve and affection as she listens. “I think it’s a love story,” she says of being drawn to the three-story corner location back in the mid-1990s. And of the decision to close: “After all our work and commitment, I would have struggled seeing the store decline. It would have been really tough on me.”
For both Lawson-Bodys, the joint interview was a sign of Roussaux and Andelman’s trust in the project. “It’s their words; it’s what makes the film more than just a reportage,” said Hugues, with Eliane adding, “It was a beautiful message of generosity—a gift from Colette to Sarah because she knew it was important.”
Back at the store, among those waiting outside, several were hoping to get their hands on one of 20 Off-White bags boasting “Colette” and “Mon Amour” in the perfect 293c Pantone blue. Others, upon entering, would load up on tote bags, postcards, lighters, giant bottles of popcorn—accessible tchotchkes that Colette always offered near the checkout as an inclusive counterpoint to its curation of more rarefied goods. A zine by Karl Hab, who estimates that he has upwards of 30,000 photos of Colette taken since 2004, stands as the only item that offers a veritable throwback to the breadth of experiences, products, and people that made the store so unique. Hab, who originally took his photos on the sly (for many years, Colette had a no-photo policy), says he wasn’t sure where all the images would end up (here’s one idea: a proper book) but that he was drawn back to Colette over and over again because the store always had something—or someone—new to behold. “I think it’s important to remember that the city of Paris had a family store such as Colette. The documentary and the zine are a good way to keep the Colette energy that existed for 20 years.”