“WE HAD AN OVERDRAFT AT THE BANK HALF THE TIME”
“Because we let ourselves be led more by our hearts than our heads, we had an overdraft at the bank half the time. My business partner eventually got fed up and, in the grip of a midlife crisis, wanted to turn Globe into a skate shop. I had zero interest in that. Around the same time, I spotted an old store on the Avenue de la Grande-Armée. It was an absolute marvel, designed in the early ’30s by an English architect. It was full of mahogany with French polish and had magnificent counters, mirrored display cabinets mounted on ball bearings, and fitting rooms the size of a living room. Called Ragueneau et Compagnie, it was owned by a 90-year-old man who’d been running it since the 1920s. His window displays were full of 1970s crap—Cardin, that sort of thing. But hidden away in the drawers behind the counter, he had inventory from the 1910s, ’20s, ’30s. I’d go there and have a mooch around from time to time. I remember he had some leather motoring masks with goggles. I bought them and sold them to Coluche [a French comedian and actor]. His store was practically deserted. There were so few customers that the owner used to sit behind his little cash register with the lights off. If a customer came in, he’d stand up and turn the lights on. I thought it would be amazing to open a store there. And that’s what happened. The managing director of Yves Saint Laurent, Jean-Sébastien Swarc—he was a Globe customer who’d become a friend of mine—told me that the place was for sale. He suggested we go into partnership and gave me 48 hours to decide. I didn’t need 48 hours; I said yes in a heartbeat. And so Hémisphères opened in 1980.“