Sarah Andelman is wondering: Are florists the new baristas?

Live plants and cut flowers are infiltrating Fashion boutiques like coffee bars did back in the day, including Agnès B.’s Rue du Vieux Colombier location in Paris, Palm Angels’ new outpost on the Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, and Calienna in Vienna, a transporting boutique that showcases houseplants along with a selection of books, beauty products and other items.

More than five years after she and her mother shuttered Colette, arguably one of the most vaunted concept stores of all time, Andelman is still attuned to new ideas in retail, big and small.

Indeed, her consultancy Just an Idea still takes on a few retail projects a year, for which she can flex her merchandising muscles and draw on her instincts for exciting shopping destinations.

In New York City, she was a fan of minuscule CW Pencil Enterprise on New York’s Lower East Side, which shuttered during the pandemic, and she’s eager to check out the Present & Correct stationery store in London.

When in Tokyo she always makes a beeline for Tsutaya Books, which incorporates a café, cocktail bar, and a gallery along with such eclectic items as scent diffusers, lamps, kimono sashes, fabrics, pouches and clutch bags.

While in upstate New York, she stumbled across Laundromat in Germantown, which includes a funky shop offering a great selection of cleaning-related and sustainable items.

She considers Kith an innovator in Paris with its curated blend of streetwear, sneakers, watches, collectibles, cereal bar and a Sadelle’s deli counter. And she’s keeping a close eye on auction houses, which now sell rare sneakers, celebrity gowns and even digital fashions.

Andelman recently assisted Pharrell Williams with a Paris event for his digital-first auction house Joopiter, offering visitors a chance to buy Thief and Heist tag bracelets and Golf le Fleur fragrances by Tyler, the Creator.

Museum shops also represent another opportunity to create enticing new retail concepts, according to Andelman, a fan of what MoMA is doing in New York, for example.

Sipping an iced matcha at Toraya and reflecting on the evolution of concept stores, Andelman notes that when Colette opened in 1997 it carried the tagline of “style, design, art, food” to explain to people what she and her mother, Colette Rousseau, were offering in their unusual three-level emporium. (Andelman served as creative director.)

They had drawn some inspiration from landmark Manhattan design shop Moss, as well as 10 Corso Como in Milan and L’Eclaireur in Paris, newfangled boutiques selling designer fashions alongside other things. From London, Conran Shop and Joseph, with its buzzy restaurant Joe’s, were other touchstones.

“With Colette, it was an explosion of different worlds — it was multiconcept,” Andelman says. “We carried what we liked, and what was missing in Paris.”

Throughout its lifespan, Colette inspired many me-too concept stores — even carbon copies. Andelman was astonished to find a Berlin boutique that carried not only the same gadgets, watches and jewelry, but also with their prices displayed in the exact same manner.

She shrugs off such challengers.

“I was not afraid for a minute because every week we would change the windows display and the offer. We knew that nobody was crazy enough to do the work we were doing,” she says. “Yes, when it opened [the copycat] was sharp, and it looked exactly like Colette, but two months later Colette had already changed into something else because it was in non-stop evolution.”

By contrast, she views the arrival of Merci, a charitable concept shop that opened on Boulevard Beaumarchais in 2009, as a “complimentary” retailer on the Paris scene, given its different aesthetic and brand max.

To be sure, she has been fascinated to watch luxury brands move away from cookie-cutter formats to offer unique experiences and concepts in flagship locations — and puzzled to witness the lemming behavior of other retailers, who seem to have all received a memo about creating “experiences.”

Shortly after Colette had closed in 2017, Andelman recalls a stroll up the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and being stunned to find DJs, live customizations and performances happening in virtually every store, often with no rhyme or reason.

Her conclusion? “If it doesn’t make sense, don’t force it… It has to be to remain organic and a little unexpected, I think.”

She notes the best department stores have also become akin to large-scale concept stores, marveling how Le Bon Marché in Paris, for example, transforms its main floor every six weeks with a new theme. “They do an amazing job to add new brands all the time,” she said.

However, “I still think there is a lack of experimentation in retail,” she laments, arguing that the most enticing ideas recently have been showcased in pop-ups, rather than permanent stores.

Interior design has become a hot area, but furniture and homeware retailers remain quite compartmentalized. “I cannot think of a design shop mixing with beauty or mixing with a book selection,” she muses, perhaps foreshadowing a new retail frontier.