Located on New Bond Street, Dior’s newest flagship store is an opulent ode to the Parisian house’s distinctive aesthetic and immaculate eye for detail.

It’s a fitting location for the house’s largest store to date. After all, Christian Dior’s love for England is well documented, transcending mere bricks and mortar. At the age of 21 the designer visited London and become enamoured with the city, “I love English traditions, English politeness, English architecture, I even love English cooking!” jotted the designer in his memoirs. Years later, the self-confessed anglophile housed his 1947 show at The Savoy and this week it came full circle as Dior returned to England, staging their Cruise 17 collection amongst Blenheim Palace’s Baroque grandeur.

And this new opening acts as an apt tribute to the designer’s London connection. Blending Dior’s iconic heritage and traditional British codes, the space fuses the house’s past and present. Take the artwork for instance, pieces by Marc Quinn and sculptors Rado Kirov and Tony Cragg feature on all floors, adding a further artistic dimension to the interior design. And it all harks back to Christian Dior himself, after all, the couturier was a contemporary art gallerist in his youth, opening an art space on rue de la Boétie twenty years before his move into fashion – it was here that Salvador Dali’s iconic painting, The Persistance of Memory, was first shown.

Losing yourself in the new Mayfair space is easily done – both metaphorically and physically. Dubbed ‘The House of Dior’, the store covers a whopping four floors. Under the guidance of New York architect Peter Marino’s creative mind, the store’s blend of heritage and modernism feels natural and understated. Mirrored walls paired with neo-Louis XVI furniture, a marble staircase amongst Georgian wall panels; it all represents an extension of Dior’s design ethos with a strong sense of modernity throughout – naturally, this is the house that gave us the iconic ‘New Look’.

Between the ground floor’s more masculine bent, housing the UK’s first Dior Homme boutique – including the house’s first UK-based demi-measure service – and the lavish womenswear department there’s an in-house perfumery offering bespoke fragrances and a snug children’s section housed in the store’s conservatory featuring an exclusive Dior HOME collection – complete with cuddly animal toys, more haute couture than Mothercare. The store also contains three private salons for VIP clients. That’s a lot of floorspace – take a quick nap on one of the many plush sofas scattered throughout, pure luxe.

Collecting the encompassing world of Dior under one roof, Dior have created a unique shopping destination. A quick ‘pop in’ soon becomes a lost afternoon, and even then you won’t want to leave the palatial surroundings, Dior’s love affair with London continues in an utterly befitting manner. Not a bad way to spend a buck or two.

The House of Dior is located at 160 New Bond St W1S 2UE