Joy, sparkle and DNA in the SS27 forecast: Galeries Lafayette’s Victoria Dartigues maps the new operators’ playbook

Joy, sparkle and DNA: Galeries Lafayette’s SS27 buying blueprint

Overview: Victoria Dartigues, director of womenswear and leather goods purchasing at Galeries Lafayette, shares how the Paris-based department store translates runway moments into a coherent, customer-centric SS27 offering. The conversation emphasizes a move away from quiet luxury toward a more joyful, expressive aesthetic that foregrounds a brand’s DNA and the customer’s personal look.

Dartigues describes buying as a team-driven discipline within four market managers and about 15 buyers, coordinated to deliver a distinctive customer journey across the Haussmann flagship and the store’s extended network. The goal: surprise and delight the shopper while maintaining profitability and turnover.

She frames Fashion Week as a 360-degree ecosystem—shows, presentations, showrooms, and multi-city scouting (London, Milan, Paris; New York represented by a team member)—that informs the brand mix and the timing of decisions. The cadence involves four shows and at least four appointments per day over a month, underscoring the intensity of curation invoked by the Galeries Lafayette team.

Key product themes: the SS27 season centers on a reimagined silhouette language and an interplay between classic and narrative pieces. Dartigues calls out the skirt as a season-defining item in ready-to-wear, highlighting variations from pencil to pleated and a spectrum from utilitarian to high-concept, as seen in Prada, Miu Miu, Dries Van Noten, and Loewe. Shirts and light blouses—sometimes translucent or lingerie-inspired—anchor looks at Chloé, Dior and Victoria Beckham, while fluid trousers add a parallel axis at Celine and The Row.

Accessories are recalibrated as statements: belts, costume jewelry, pearls, and layering take center stage, with scarves and bandanas moving into personalisation territory. Footwear trends pivot toward a feminine, joyful expressiveness—healed flip-flops, court shoes, bows, and embellishments, particularly at Loewe, Saint Laurent and Jil Sander.

Beyond silhouettes, the narrative rests on personality over following a single “look of the season”. Dartigues notes a shift from minimalist quiet luxury to a moment of “joyful and sparkling fashion” where each house asserts its DNA. Brands with concessions provide direct buying opportunities, while Galeries Lafayette’s showroom discussions help calibrate assortment to its specific customer base.

Business and budgeting context: forecasting remains iterative. After showroom discovery, teams pool ideas to compare what brands bring and how offerings complement or cannibalise existing ranges. Budgeting follows a staged approach: a department-level starting point, with allocations by brand aligned to showroom timings and deliveries. Multi-brand spaces preserve a reserve for discovery, while major houses operate with more structured pre-planned budgets.

Dartigues highlights that colors are a calculated risk—bold hues appear in commercial shapes, balancing commercial viability with expressive design. The customer, she explains, now signs off with their own look: the retailer’s job is to translate that demand into a coherent, profitable, and aspirational offer.

This SS27 framework matters for fashion operators because it maps a direct route from runway energy to shop-floor realities: a premium customer in Galeries Lafayette’s network expects both exclusivity and approachability, with a product lineup that can be worn across multiple contexts, from office to evening events, while still feeling tactilely luxurious.

For luxury brands and retail teams, the piece offers actionable signals: understand each house’s DNA and how it can slot into a broader multi-brand strategy without eroding brand identity; manage budget with protection for discovery opportunities; and design assortments that empower personal styling, rather than forcing a uniform seasonal look.

Trend forecasters should note the emphasis on joyful expression after periods of restraint, suggesting a potential acceleration of color, embellishment, and layering in the coming season. The SS27 framework also raises questions about how far department stores will push personalization and how they’ll balance the risk of over-saturation with the demand for distinct brand voices.

“We want joyful and sparkling fashion,” Dartigues asserts, signaling a renewed appetite for personality-driven merchandising that still respects business realities.

• Team-based buying structure that aligns multi-brand and flagship strategies
• Showroom-driven discovery with budget reserves for emergent brands
• Balance between bold color stories and commercial viability
• Personality-driven merchandising that empowers customers to articulate their own look