PARIS — After a decade at Duke Street, Ami Paris is moving into a new London home.
Come the first week of May, the French brand founded by Alexandre Mattiussi will open a 1,300-square-foot address on Sloane Street, in the tony Chelsea area.
Modeled after the Marais flagship, the sleek space will be decked out in soft beige tones with touches of oak wood, Euville stone and gilded details meant to impart a lush living room feel. There will also be a selection of works by Swedish-Mexican artist Andreas Diaz Andersson.
But don’t get too attached: the new store is an 18-month pop-up, as Ami searches for a new permanent location.
The French label’s chief executive officer Nicolas Santi-Weil described the move as “a great opportunity” to accelerate in the U.K., which is Ami’s fourth-largest market in Europe and sixth overall.
Ami recently opened a men’s-only pop-up at Selfridges that will run until early May and has another store in London on Wardour Street as well as a corner at Harrods. It is also stocked at Liberty and Harvey Nichols, and has a spot at Bicester Village.
Sloane Street came on Ami’s radar during the year-long search ahead of the planned end of the 10-year lease on its erstwhile flagship. Staying on Duke Street was not an option, given the area’s ongoing shift from fashion to food at a fast clip, according to the executive.
Though much smaller than its predecessor, it sits in a luxury shopping area popular with both local and international clientele, catty-corner with Oliver Peoples, Emilia Wickstead and a few doors down from Cartier and Tiffany & Co.
“We realized that when we have higher footfall, we’re very capable at transforming it [into sales], as we have done with Wardour Street,” he told WWD. “[Sloane Street] has at once a local and international clientele, high traffic and we know we work well in this kind of environment.”
The new address also dovetails in the 15-year-old French brand’s reframed retail approach, which saw it cut a significant number of wholesale accounts and step up its own retail and e-commerce, brought in-house in 2024. Its share subsequently leaped to around 20 percent, while retail sits around 45 percent and wholesale shrank down to a 35 percent share.
The company, which does not share its sales figures, is “well balanced between France and international,” said Santi-Weil.
For the fiscal year 2025, which ended February, Ami saw “a light growth of its global turnover” despite adverse conditions that included U.S. tariffs, China’s retail downturn and the onset of war in the Middle East. The French brand currently has a headcount just shy of 900, up from around 600 two years ago.
The Hannam flagship in Seoul is the French brand’s largest yet.
Courtesy of Ami Paris
Recent openings include Brussels on Place du Grand Sablon, a historic square that has turned into a hub for art galleries, jewelers and high-end labels like Christian Louboutin and Tag Heuer; and its largest-yet flagship in Seoul’s high-profile district of Hannam, a 4,575-square foot unit located in a key neighborhood for fashion, culture and high-end lifestyle in the South Korean capital.
In December, the French label also signaled its North American ambitions with the opening of a Toronto store and arrival at Neiman Marcus.
Meanwhile, Santi-Weil said the company was stepping up its CRM and clienteling investments, and had opened a larger warehousing facility in northwestern France with French specialist ID Logistics. There are also plans to open a warehouse in the U.S., in the second half of 2026 or the early months of 2027, to serve the North American market.
