Since the pandemic, people are once again fantasising about country houses. Easier to reach than a holiday home, more often surrounded by nature than located by the sea, the country house tells a story that is just waiting to meet ours. They promise rejuvenation, inspiration, reconnection and a slower pace of life. Who could resist?

As a result, rural tourism is booming, new options are appearing, and the Perche region is establishing itself as a local alternative to the Luberon. Old residences, mansions, farmhouses, hunting lodges and extravagances that had become too expensive to maintain are being reinvented as country houses to rent or share, kid-friendly and decorated with cool, iconic vintage finds, perfect for cosy moments by the fire. These collections of ‘ready-to-live-in houses less than two hours from Paris’ are available for short stays with the option of a babysitter, a fridge full of regional products, a barbecue and ready-made picnic baskets for unforgettable lunches. These new guest houses allow you to live like in a Sautet film and play at happiness without worrying about the material side of things. No wonder they are so appealing.

The phenomenon is also affecting the corporate world, where secondary residences are unexpectedly reprogrammed for employees, especially those in their thirties, who can use them to work remotely, brainstorm, polish their slides in an aspirational, Instagrammable setting, but also escape to go hiking, meditate, hug trees and, when evening comes, return to let loose at extended aperitifs or improvised DJ sets that no neighbour will complain about. What better way to bond project teams and restore the desirability of the employer brand?

The success of these two models of neo-country homes, which no one would have bet on in the 1990s and which are now attracting investors of all kinds, is no coincidence. It confirms a renewed interest in the countryside and provides insight into the three major drivers of consumption, those capable of triggering the much-hoped-for desire to buy: the rejuvenating elsewhere, the protective community and the rewarding aesthetic. The winning combination of the moment.

We recently learned of the launch of a new channel dedicated to pets. Called Dog & Cat TV, it aims to inform, advise, move and entertain viewers. The programme includes reports on the latest news about our four-legged friends, health, nutrition and training advice, documentaries and reality TV-style programmes. Gamelle des chefs and Cœurs à adopter are likely to be particularly popular…

In recent years, the pet industry has been thriving, and it didn’t take long for marketers to sniff out this niche. Proof of this can be seen in the proliferation of daycare centres, dog sitters and dog trainers of all kinds, giving rise to new obligations, new codes and new consumer habits. This is enough to whet the appetites of a wide variety of people and delight ‘pet parents’, the new name for those who were once called ‘owners’ in the past.

It should be noted that while cats have had their moment of glory on the internet thanks to their antics, dogs are the ones who come out on top in real life. Their numbers have not changed much in France (9.9 million in 2024), but the age of their owners has fallen significantly, with those under 35 making up the majority of owners. Gone are the days of granny’s lapdog.

There are many explanations for this phenomenon. Some see dogs as a kind of test for couples before the arrival of their first child. Dogs in the service of demographic rearmament. The age at which people have their first child continues to rise, while the number of couples who do not want children is growing. Others, more psychologically minded, consider pets to be a reassuring protection for Gen Zers who are anxious about the state of the world and its cohort of uncertainties. A remedy for the porosity of the outside world as well as clear proof that the consolation society is not just a theory. Dogs and Labubu, same fight.

Finally, faced with the omnipresence of virtual relationships, pets represent an antidote, a way of reconnecting with the materiality of the real world, the present moment and even social interaction, as dogs can be a catalyst for encounters and exchanges. This return to reality is confirmed by the success of chess and board games, as well as van life among people in their thirties. The very people we imagined to be lost in the virtual world…

Department stores and magazines are the two main victims of digitalisation. Is it any wonder that they have decided to join forces to prove that they are not doomed to disappear? The former now like to present themselves as places of experience (even hosting a theatre stage like Le Bon Marché…), while the latter like to come out of their kiosks when covering current events. During fashion week, for example.

Grazia magazine has set up shop on the first floor of La Samaritaine until October 29th with an exhibition tracing its editorial history through its most memorable covers since its first issue in 1938. Each era featured provides an opportunity to showcase one of the pieces from the current season. Clever. Lectures on creating a magazine complete the experience.

The same strategy was employed at BHV with Elle, which, to mark its 80th anniversary, decorated the store’s windows and created dedicated display areas. Every Wednesday in September, readers were invited to meet the magazine’s journalists and take a look behind the scenes, while Saturdays were dedicated to lifestyle events focusing on pleasure and well-being.

The strategy is clear: by partnering with iconic women’s magazines, department stores are affirming their place in the modern world, suggesting a different perspective on their identity and product range, and transforming their store floors into event venues. They are appealing to a curious clientele seeking meaning and connection beyond the simple act of purchasing.

For magazines, these partnerships also represent a way to extend their influence in the physical space as their business model is reinvented. When all print media is migrating to digital spaces, is it not a way to differentiate oneself and thus attract attention to invest reality alongside players that were thought to represent the old world?

The concept of the magazine-shop is ultimately just one possible expression of the concept store that captured the imagination of the retail sector in the late 1990s, convinced of the need to break down barriers between product ranges in order to present consumption as a way of life. Staged and recontextualised, products are transformed into objects, shoppers into aesthetes, brands into stories and shops into galleries. This is a transformation that digital technology can hardly promise.

When, in the early 2010s (with the birth of Ten Belles and Café Coutume), the first baristas appeared in Paris, young, bearded, tattooed, Australian or Anglo-Saxon, their discourse on the selection of their coffees—inevitably rare, sourced and eco-responsible—was as instantly appealing as their ability to create foam art in their cups.

A new era was dawning in the world of café culture, and everyone quickly realised that distinctive features and precision in execution would be essential to restore the sense of wonder that coffee had lost by becoming such a commonplace part of our daily lives. Drinking coffee was soon to become a ritual, the ultimate fantasy of all those seeking to re-enchant the mundane and construct new imaginaries designed to convince us to buy. The proliferation of latte foam art competitions soon confirmed this.

Who had been interested in foam until then? At Starbucks, enclosed in a to-go mug and thus destined to be drunk without being seen, coffee had bought its modernity by sacrificing its taste and colour under the onslaught of toppings and flavourings. Foam, rendered invisible, has not yet had its final say, however, and has even become one of the distinguishing features of coffee shops.

Today, foam is responsible for revitalising the beer market by establishing itself as a means of attracting new drinkers.

After launching its Heineken Studio, a laboratory for experimentation and innovation, Heineken recently unveiled its first creation, the result of research combining traditional brewing methods with innovation: Foam Infusion, a process that involves flavouring not the liquid, but the foam of its beers, with a range of aromas (tropical, aniseed, coffee and even spritz). Heineken Foam Infusion Style Anis, with its aniseed-flavoured foam, is already available exclusively in Marseille. Clever. It transforms the foam, which is the historic signature of Heineken beer, into a whole new taste experience.

Far from being just froth, a light and ephemeral layer, a visible space in the process of disappearing, foam proves to us through coffee and beer that it can also be the source of new tasting experiences, both visual and gustatory. With foam, the sensations do not always fade away.

Since the pandemic, many lucky owners of outdoor spaces, aware of their privilege, have begun to pay new attention to them. The economy of attention means looking at what we used to merely see.

Balconies are thus transformed into mini patios and patios into mini gardens, giving rise to a flood of new concerns and new aesthetics that no gardening or DIY retailer could complain about.

The small round table in coloured metal, matched with two folding chairs, accompanied by fairy lights or a candle holder, has thus become a cool status symbol for young urban hipsters with balconies, just like a piece of vintage furniture, an iconic lamp or a Berber rug.

Owners of gardens or “plots of land” are also suddenly struck by new ambitions. A swimming pool and barbecue, even a Japanese one, are no longer enough for them. They dream of a garden lounge and an outdoor kitchen so they can “live outdoors as well as indoors”. Long live local Robinson Crusoe-style adventures. Especially when protected by a connected mosquito trap that can be controlled from your smartphone, such as those offered by Home Defense, whose stated ambition is to “revolutionise our outdoor moments”.

Some are also tempted by home extensions, a market that shows no sign of slowing down. A veranda or, why not, a pergola, a carport, a pool house (a covered area) or even a fully equipped prefabricated cube that can be ‘plugged’ onto your house to become, when the time arises, a perfect independent studio to welcome a new life as a freelancer, satisfy a desire for a private workshop, accommodate teenagers seeking independence or paying visitors on short-term rentals.

Those who can gain square metres, others gain comfort or aesthetics, and everyone feels they have transformed their living environment without moving and in a minimal amount of time. The dream.

A logic of optimisation already at work in interior design (customised storage, mezzanines, double-height rooms, etc.) which, in its own way, tells us something about current expectations and which could well spread to all areas of consumption given the economic context. In the absence of opportunities for expansion, optimisation as a way of life.

Could the Rue de Rennes in Paris be the testing ground for the future of retail? A few years ago, Uniqlo found refuge in the premises of Fnac, allowing its customers to acquire a book and a down jacket in the same place. Now we hear that Decathlon is opening inside the Boulanger store. And to think that some people found that all the shops were closing one after the other on this Parisian thoroughfare, which had its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s. All revolutions are not always visible.

After a period of expansion, characterised by the proliferation of retail outlets, we are now seeing a period of consolidation, with brands merging with one another. This is hypertext logic applied to commerce. At least if one of them closes, it will be less noticeable than in the streets of many town centres that are considered dead. The strategy has its advantages. It also leads brands to reinvent the range of their products and services, as shops set up in this way cannot appear in their usual form due to lack of space.

Now that Decathlon has joined forces with Boulanger, the store has adopted a ‘city’ approach dedicated to urban sports activities, essentially focusing on the three pillars of modern city life: cycling, running and fitness, complemented by a selection of essential items. To boost the location, Decathlon also set up a repair and maintenance workshop (bicycles, scooters, etc.) as well as lockers for picking up online orders. This is ideal for generating traffic that Boulanger can only benefit from.

This strategy, which has everything of a win-win situation, could quickly catch on. Whether by chance or coincidence, the press recently revealed that, following a successful trial, French sneaker brand Panafrica had just formalised a partnership with La Poste, allowing it to sell two of its limited edition models, designed in La Poste’s iconic colours, in around 30 of its offices. La Poste had already tried its hand at direct sales with Le Slip Français and Duralex glasses, demonstrating its desire to give its offices new roles now that traditional mail is drying up.

While the real world of trade wonders about its future, why not try out nesting-doll commerce? The ultimate two-in-one solution.

While luxury bags buyers are experiencing a sudden fatigue, plunging the sector’s results into an unexpected abyss, it is good to note that the syndrome does not seem to affect the Cabaïa bag brand. Certainly, it is not a luxury brand, but reflecting on the permanence of desire in some can help understand those who have lost it.

Cabaïa has just celebrated its tenth anniversary, and its success is such that it has become the number one backpack brand in France, a position previously held firmly by Eastpak. Reducing the reason for its success to just the price of its products would be short-sighted because everyone knows that being cheap is not enough to see your market share grow… Cabaïa is not a brand that makes influencers and fashionistas fantasize. It exudes the energy of a certain peripheral and invisible France, made up of consumers who like to stroll through Promod, Kiabi, or But, in search of the minimal dose of modernity and self-assertion necessary not to feel excluded from the present times—Between “nice&practical” and “fashionable but capable of lasting.”

To seduce them, Cabaïa has two assets. The first is that its founders do not come from the fashion world but from trade and tech, which allows them to take a different look at their offer, free from all the injunctions attributed to trends and driven by the search for concrete points of differentiation such as practicality, longevity, and various customisation tricks. Result: customisable bags, repairable for life, and B Corp certified in favour of responsible consumption to make up for manufacturing in China. Bags capable of making friends envious, which could not have been bought by their mothers and which make an ideal gift for a farewell party.

The second asset of the brand lies in the strength of its community, engaged, diverse, intergenerational, and regularly consulted. “We don’t want to treat community members as clients, but as partners… we involve them from A to Z, from design to functionality…” say the founders of Cabaïa. Well spotted. Here, the sense of belonging hoped for by all brands is not just displayed; it is lived.

Appropriation has replaced belonging, and the bag of my desires, the bag of their desires.

As the issue of screen time preoccupies minds and the media, a number of remedies are emerging, signalling a growing awareness and a reminder that reality has not yet had its last word.

Here, there are smartphone-free evenings, there, restaurants invite you to leave your phones in a box before sitting at the table. Or there’s the proliferation of opportunities to meet people in real life, through activities or village festivals that have come back to life after years of job interview-like first dates. Board games, card games and even chess are also making a big comeback, proving popular with young people who like to meet up in games cafés, despite being thought to have fallen into a digital space-time warp. Every second, a board game is sold in France, according to industry professionals—far from being unhappy about it.

All brands are wondering how to take advantage of these new habits, quickly reclassified as the ‘sharing trend’. Their response will be mini- and shareable formats, proving that the exchange of tastes, shapes and textures is a prerequisite for conviviality.

Inspired by Krispy Kreme, Burger King launched baby burgers this summer in boxes of three or nine, allowing customers to discover the full range of its recipes. This world-first made us wonder why it took so long for such offers to appear, as it seems obvious that mini products have a bright future ahead of them.

Not only because they showcase the brands’ expertise or respond to current concerns about budget and health. But above all because they confirm the power of two driving forces behind today’s consumption: that of inclusion, now seen as the new way of living together, and that of the aperitif, which has become the ultimate moment of conviviality long reserved to meals.

The individualisation of tastes and the fragmentation of moments of consumption might lead us to believe that we would now only gather to eat on special occasions. That would prove to be quite short-sighted. Gen Z is rediscovering the pleasure of real-life interaction, games and discussion, to the point where one might wonder whether the coffee table is becoming the new screen.

Apart from the heatwave, what else is there to remember about this summer? Labubu, the plush key rings shaped like little monster-bunnies, hanging from numerous backpacks and luxury bags. An (additional) sign of community spirit as well as confirmation of the current desire to display one’s emotions.

Sauvy B, born on TikTok with the intention of supplanting Spritz: a chilled Sauvignon, garnished with a few slices of jalapeño pepper straight from the freezer. The recipe for innovation lies in the combination of reassuring familiarity and thrilling unknown.

The lukewarm response to Intervilles’ comeback, a sign that nostalgia and intergenerational appeal are not always the promised land we hoped for. Or the Terrasse du Ritz on Place Vendôme, proof of brands’ desire to occupy more and more public spaces (pavements, beaches) and thus capture our attention—the new battleground.

We also learned that in Shanghai (and here tomorrow, who knows?), the Vuitton brand had set up a unique retail boat: a 30-metre-high trompe l’oeil ship with a monogrammed metal hull and a cockpit reminiscent of a stack of suitcases. Named The Louis, it was designed to attract Chinese customers, whom the luxury world currently finds a little ‘tired’, thanks to various themed rooms based on the brand’s expertise and history, complemented by a Louis Vuitton Café, to make part of the dream accessible. Offering new distribution formats is always a way to trigger the desire to buy. After pop-ups, which have become too numerous and too predictable over time, the flagship store could make a comeback in the literal sense of the word…

From pop-ups to retail boats, is this not ultimately a wide balancing act that all brands wishing to prove their vitality must now perform? A movement that is reminiscent of the fan, another success story of this sweltering summer. Familiar to the Spanish, it has now moved beyond its folkloric roots, thanks to fashion designers who see it as a stylish, sensual and inclusive accessory, perfect for coping with uncontrollable temperatures. A sharp movement of the wrist to open it with a snap and get noticed, and the object is ready to produce the expected gentle breeze. A big move for a breath of fresh air: it is impossible not to see the message in it…

As the summer break approaches, all the sociological minds are trying to find the it-product capable of embodying consumer expectations for the first half of the year. If the exercise is as arbitrary as that of defining the colour of the year, coffee could be a worthy candidate, so ubiquitous has it become in our daily lives.

France, the land of zinc and of the little café noir, has rapidly been converted to coffee-shops, which are springing up like mushrooms, sometimes just a few metres from each other, heralding a coming battle that will not be without victims. In the meantime, seated on a stool or a shared bench, everyone is trying, sunglasses on, to master their language and prices. A flat white is not a cappuccino or a latte, and a slice of banana bread here costs around five euros.

Many brands are now offering a café space in their shops, or even a specific pop-up with a more or less immersive feel and the promise of exclusive experiences. Dior, Vuitton, Saint Laurent, Hermes and Kitsuné were the first to think of this for their flagships. They have now been joined by Longchamp, Lancaster, Kujten and Clarins, all of whom have recently designed an ephemeral café adorned in their own colours. The austere La Procure bookshop has even recently opened one, in partnership with the Coutume café. Offering coffee is a sure-fire way of boosting the appeal of your business. And it is always present in the hybrid shops so popular with Gen Z and Millennials, such as Coffee & Flower Les Artizans and the coffee-and-pottery café La Papoterie (each with three addresses in the capital), not to mention all the neo-bakeries of the moment.

Coffee is attractive (particularly specialty coffee), coffee creates community, coffee is not (too) expensive, coffee adds soul and modernity and coffee shops are much more Instagrammable than all bars put together. Coffee is also associated with an image of cool expertise and can easily take on a number of eco-responsible or humanist themes that Jacques Vabre’s Gringo would never have thought of.

From cups to ethics, coffee has it all. And if it should be seen as an example to follow, it’s because it ticks all the boxes on the enchanted new marketing roadmap: product-place-culture-aesthetic-commitment. Woe to any brand that misses one.