Chanel opened a major new Paris flagship on Thursday, combining three buildings, including a former 17th century convent, in a mega store at 19 rue Cambon designed by Peter Marino.
The giant 1,500 square-meter store, which spreads around the corner of Paris’ busiest luxury thoroughfare, St Honoré, to rue Duphot and rue Cambon, with entrances on all three streets, is named 19 rue Cambon. Giant plate glass walls at the back reveal an interior where there grow camellias, Coco’s fetish flower.

CHANEL new flagship store in Paris at Rue Cambon
In an intriguing work of engineering, the three buildings knit together varying ceiling heights and passages, into possibly the brightest Chanel store anywhere, affording views out onto the Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption church and the more distant Tuileries.
Built on the exterior Oise, the classic honey-coloured limestone of Paris, and finished inside with metallic carpets, blond Versailles parquet, lacquered dressing room walls, curtains embroidered by Lesage and beautiful crystal and gold lamps and sconces by Goossens, the couture jeweller and modernist design brand that Coco largely discovered, that the house now owns.

CHANEL new mega store Paris at Rue Cambon
The store is also located just 50 meters from Chanel’s historic Paris headquarters at 31 rue Cambon, also the site of the studio of Chanel’s creative director Karl Lagerfeld, a building first acquired by Coco Chanel in 1918.
Everything ultimately linked to a central chalk stone stairwell with vertical mirrors and a 14-meter high artwork by Gregor Hildebrandt made of steel and vinyl disks that looks like one long never-ending fan of Lagerfeld’s.

CHANEL new flagship store in Paris at Rue Cambon
Everything is echoing the famed mirrored, Art Deco staircase of 31 rue Cambon, where Chanel often posed for photos, or sat at the top, the better to see her models walk below in couture shows.
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