Spending is a spectacle at the Paris mall to rule them all

The online shopping boom has rendered the idea of going on a devil-may-care shopping spree almost quaint. Deals in honour of Black Friday have already been filling our inboxes and following us around the internet for weeks.

We’ve become a society of furtive shoppers – we binge buy, or drip buy, behind the privacy of our screens. Or ordinary mortals do, anyway. Apparently, at the high-end luxury end of the sector, there’s a vogue for shopping in real life, in public, strutting your stuff and your dosh while you do it.

At least that’s the bet being made by Bernard Arnault, Europe’s richest man and the owner of luxury group LMVH, who has dropped €1billion on a vast, majestic new shopping emporium in the heart of Paris. His own wares (which include Louis Vuitton and

There’s a vogue for shopping in public, strutting your stuff and your dosh

Christian Dior) will be on sale in the plushest possible surrounds when La Samaritaine opens next April in a site near the Louvre.

The building was forced to close in 2005 after it was deemed structurally unsafe and a fire risk, but when it flings open its doors after a very lengthy period of delays (Paris’s socialist government insisted on giving some of it over to social housing) it’ll house a dazzling array of 600 brands, including those belonging to LMVH.

The hope is that such a palace of luxury in the heart of the world’s most romantic city will lure those with the most cash to splash, from China and the Middle East.

No doubt it will; the rest of us, however, will have to content ourselves with something less bling – ogling, then hurrying home to order cheaper versions online.