Filigranes moves into Mayfair department store

Brussels’ flagship bookshop Filigranes has moved to Mayfair – not London – but the grand building formerly home of BMW and now housing the Mayfair concept store, at Boulevard de Waterloo 25, just under a kilometre away from its old Avenue des Arts location near Arts-Loi metro.

This means that the formerly cramped store is benefiting from more space to house some 150,000 books on four floors of the current department store. It will take up about 1,200m² of the 3,500m² building.

All the familiar sections of Filigranes will be kept, such as literature, fine arts, comic strip books (BDs), youth, games and toys. The Dutch and international languages department will benefit from a more prominent position.

Currently there is a cafe upstairs, but in time there will be a restaurant in the middle of the store with "seasonal, home-cooked cuisine", said Mayfair director Joevin Ortjens. "We are going to improve the offer, with comparable prices."

The shop will also keep running its regular events such as meetings with authors, signing sessions and debates. The upcoming programme includes Fabrice Arfi (investigative journalist at Mediapart), Swann Périssé (comedian and climate activist) and former French prime minister and European commissioner Michel Barnier, also the author of La Grande Illusion, about Brexit.

Filigranes was bought by Mayfair's founder, the businessman Mehmet Sandurac, in December 2024, in competition with an investment group including former Delhaize chief executive Denis Knoops.

The bookstore had faced challenging times brought on by difficulties in the book market and accessibility problems. Restructuring and financial adjustments had not helped.

Today, Sandurac believes that combining books with lifestyle is a winning combination. Together with Ortjens, he is aiming for sales of more than €15 million in 2025, with a €20 million target for 2026.

“The challenge is to find the right balance,” he added. On the one hand, he wants to remain loyal to Filigranes’ regular customers and at the same time he is aiming to preserve Mayfair’s historic French-speaking base. “The goal is clear: to bring these two worlds together into one inclusive and coherent experience.”

With job losses common in mergers and moves, Filigranes is lucky. Some team members have been working at the store for more than 25 years. Sandurac wants to preserve that stability by keeping nearly all of its 30-strong staff.

The Bulletin visited the store on the opening day and all was as normal, bar a few gaps where books had not been taken out of their boxes.

A big opening party is however planned for September, with Ortjens telling Bruzz: “We didn’t want to rush anything. We wanted to give people time to get to know us.”