Casablanca, the luxury brand founded by Charaf Tajer, has opened its inaugural flagship store in Paris, choosing the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré as its entry into physical retail. The opening signals more than a retail expansion and underscores the brand’s ambition to solidify its cultural and commercial footprint in one of the world’s most historically significant fashion capitals.
The location, on a corner plot within Paris’s prestigious 8th arrondissement on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, is a high-value corridor for global luxury, home to maisons such as Hermès and Chanel, and long associated with international cachet. For emerging houses like Casablanca, the street offers not just visibility but a validation within the fashion hierarchy.
A high-value corridor for global luxury
Paris is, of course, a critical base for fashion brands, not only as a global destination for tourism and luxury shopping, but also as the centre of haute couture, institutional credibility, and artistic heritage. Real estate along the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré carries both financial and narrative weight; obtaining a retail foothold here is rare, especially for young labels.
For Tajer, a Paris native raised in the multicultural Belleville neighbourhood, the store is also personal. “Five or six years ago, I said, ‘I want a corner on that street,’ and everyone said it was impossible,” he recounts. “Opening this store is like coming home—but more than that, it's about bringing something new to Paris, something progressive.”
The three-level boutique, designed with Steve Grimes (Casablanca’s brand art director), London-based Counterfeit Studio, and Morocco’s Elements Lab, reflects the brand’s recurring themes of sport, cinema, and cultural duality. Its design references range from the classical—arched niches, Haussmannian limestone, and Carrara marble mosaics—to the cinematic and speculative, such as a Kubrick-inspired lightbox ceiling and a sculptural tennis court that binds the store’s two upper floors.
The aesthetic interplay of old and new, luxury and sport, Paris and Casablanca, is deliberate. The lower level is wrapped in plush green carpet that climbs walls and curves across transparent display cases, designed as both retail fixtures and collectible art. On the ground floor, a palette of rich red, green, and blue interrupts the neutral architecture, offering a visual articulation of the brand’s DNA: bold yet refined, heritage-conscious yet forward-looking.
The flagship follows seven years of steady brand growth, largely defined by Casablanca’s distinctive blend of Mediterranean leisurewear, graphic storytelling, and aspirational positioning. With its retail debut, the brand transitions from being digitally native and stockist-driven to establishing a direct-to-consumer, immersive environment.
“I’m not a dreamer—I’m a man of projects,” Tajer says. “This isn’t just a store. It’s proof of what’s possible.”
A second flagship is due to open in Beverly Hills later this summer.