Galeries Lafayette is intimately associated with France and more specifically with Paris’ Boulevard Haussmann. With the exception of its shop in central Berlin, this has always been a French department store proposition.

Since last month however, it also has a shop in downtown Beijing which does much to capture the look and feel of the luxury Boulevard Haussmann flagship.

This five-floor, 500,000 sq ft store, with an interior designed by UK consultancy HMKM, has at its heart a ceiling that replicates the Art Nouveau stained glass cupola of the Paris shop with an LED display.

It’s a motif that is repeated across the store on cash desks, shopping bags and in-store displays, and is aimed at reinforcing the retailer’s Gallic credentials for the many Chinese shoppers who have travelled to Paris to visit the original, as well as those who have not.

Each of the floors features its own palette of colours, materials and motifs and the drama of the interior is also apparent on the exterior where large LED screens wrap around the double-height entrance doors, displaying footage from catwalk shows.

It is considerably more than a decade since Galeries Lafayette ventured beyond the home country, when it opened its Berlin outpost, and the leap to the Far East is a big one.

But allowing for the fact that Paris is the number one destination for Chinese tourists (ahead of London), the decision seems canny.

There are few reasons therefore for supposing that this will not be a success for the retailer and it can equally be assumed that this will quickly become a landmark retail space in Beijing’s Xidan area.