ReportageUnmissable event for tourists before the health crisis, this emblematic place of shopping and luxury suffers from a real disaffection.
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It’s not enough to make an appointment: you also need to have your temperature checked and stand in line. In the meantime, a salesperson asks customers if they’ve already set their sights on a particular model. Woe to the one who answers in the negative, the impression of embarrassment will be immediate. And, once inside the store, disappointment sometimes lurks: not all models are in stock. Apple has been touting the “experience” in its Apple Stores for years. In times of the Covid-19 pandemic, on Fifth Avenue at the gates of Central Park, the“Experience” is disastrous.
At the beginning of January, the prestigious New York avenue is only a shadow of itself. The Tiffany store, just bought by Bernard Arnault, is under construction, extended until 2022, and welcomes the customer in temporary premises. You always have to arm yourself with a little courage to go to Gucci, owned by Kering, which has the misfortune of being located at the bottom of the Trump Tower, still guarded by the police at the end of the presidential reign.
Salespeople at Nike or the Bulgari jeweler welcome rare customers with open arms to their modernized doorsteps, while a worker is busy putting up posters on a Victoria’s Secret store that has obviously closed its doors for good. For lack of tourists and businessmen, the prestigious Plaza Hotel and the surrounding restaurants are closed and the avenues are deserted.
Pre-existing ailments
So will the Covid-19 get the better of this legendary meeting, located at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 57e Street, where the business district (Midtown) and the chic residential district of the Upper East Side meet?
No, answer the specialists in the sector, even if the crisis is severe. “After the Covid, people will want to come back to New York and New York on Fifth Avenue because that’s where it’s happening. Fifth Avenue is the gateway to the American dream », Notes the French Jérôme Barth, president of the Fifth Avenue association, with his hundreds of Americans who are proposing in marriage with their engagement ring just bought at Tiffany.
“There is no way the New York experience will go away. We already heard this speech ten or fifteen years ago during the emergence of Dubai: it was the new Mecca, the new avant-garde of art and luxury, “forget Paris and New York”. This never happened, because Dubai was a purely commercial enterprise and did not have this culture which demands this freedom of spirit of movement and integration that New York offers to everyone ”, assures Thomai Serdari, professor of luxury at New York University.
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