Colette Store Paris – Effective shop lighting for changing displays

Founded in 1997 as one of the world’s original concept stores on Rue Saint Honoré in Paris, Colette has since become an institution in the fashion and lifestyle landscape. It hosts an incredible mix of curated products stunningly illuminated with state-of-the-art ERCO LED lighting technology.

Colette offers a shopping experience of the most eclectic kind: On three levels, covering a total area of 740 square metres, the store´s founder, Colette Rousseau, and creative director, Sarah Andelman, present and market collections designed by the most noted international fashion designers, complemented by a selection of shoes, watches, jewellery, bags, cosmetics, perfume, books, magazines, toys and sporting goods, furniture and home accessories, music and techno gadgets.
Noted for its broad range and diversity - with differentiated sales area designs, an integrated gallery for changing art exhibitions, and a small, elegant F & B in the basement, known as the "Water Bar" - the store keeps in tune with the times, continually expanding and updating its selection, with weekly new displays in the shop windows and redesigned sections inside the store.

A flexible lighting concept deploying ERCO LED technology illuminates the different departments and constantly changing luxury products in the store with a maximum of effect: excellent colour rendering brings out every nuanced hue of the fashion on display whilst the precise and brilliant light accentuates patterns and materials with a sharp-edged beam for a three-dimensional effect. The concept takes the same approach that ERCO advises for the museum, born from many years of experience in the field: the selected lighting tools ensure optimum glare control for stylishly presented accessories, watches and jewellery on glass shelving and in display cabinets as well as precise illumination of the displayed art.
The ERCO Optec spotlights used in the store are true all-round stars - not least with their capability of offering a range of light distributions that cover every requirement for superb shop lighting. In the store windows, their high-contrast accent lighting sets off the mannequins as effectively as the shoes and bags arranged on glass shelving; above the product tables in the store´s "hi-tech zone" on the ground floor, they provide glare-free light for the watches and techno gadgets. Optec spotlights combined with Optec lens wallwashers mounted along track on the upper level´s window section achieves high visual comfort with uniform ambient lighting for the sales floor, whilst wallwashing gives the space an open and expansive appearance, enhanced by striking accent light on selected garments. Quintessence lens wallwashers and spotlights round out the concept with scenic illumination of the exhibition section and its changing artwork on the upper level. Using a variety of different ERCO lighting tools creates separate zones that neatly divide the eclectic world of Colette - thereby facilitating orientation as well as a flexible response to the fast-paced lifestyle of the Parisian fashion temple.

Project data

Project: Colette Store, Paris / France
Products: Optec, Quintessence
Photo credit: ERCO GmbH, www.erco.com, Photo: Edgar Zippel, Berlin / Germany