Two years of working together had changed their relationship in subtle ways. They really were like a pair of sisters now. Sometimes they disagreed about whether to take on a supplier, or how to price the goods. When they did, they argued it out, and although Marie had the final say, she always respected Claire’s opinion and her intellect.

But they would both have agreed instantly on one thing. The Joséphine store could never have succeeded without the guiding hand of Marc.

“Our greatest competition is the Galeries Lafayette. They are just along the boulevard from us. They are much bigger. The business is well run and constantly innovating. There’s no point in trying to mimic all their departments, like haberdashery. We compete, as we always did, on fashionable goods at the best price. So we have to make people come to us because of the way we sell the goods, and because we always have the latest style, almost before it’s arrived! We must follow the old French military maxim: Il nous faut de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace. We need audacity, more audacity, always audacity.”

“You make it sound like a theater,” Claire laughed.

“But that’s it, exactly,” cried Marc. “A great store is not just a useful place. It’s an experience. It needs drama and surprise, like a theater.”

And he proved it. The Joséphine store was a constant surprise. Mannequins were being used in store windows now. But the windows at Joséphine didn’t only show off the dresses. They told a story, like a painting. Marc also had a gallery inside the store, where new artists’ work was shown. Every month something happened at Joséphine, something that was talked about, something that one had to go and see before it disappeared. It was a sensation.

The beauty parlor and the hair salon were huge successes too. Joséphine was the best place for young women to get the new, short, boyish haircut, the gamine look.

By the spring of 1924, Marc was running with a new theme for the summer.

The Olympics.

It was quite remarkable really. The ancient sports festival had been revived only in 1896. Appropriately, the first games had been in Athens. With one gap during the war, the games had continued every four years. Paris had been the venue in 1900, followed by St. Louis in America; then London, Stockholm and Antwerp had all had their turns. But now the games were returning to Paris again: proof indeed, the French thought—as if any were needed—that the capital of France was the finest city in the world.

Already Marc had his plans for windows with themes like track events, swimming, boxing, cycle racing. The store’s theme that summer would be sportive, with sportily cut tweeds and jaunty little cloche hats lined up for the months of September and October.