Only Chanel would call its legendary Rue Cambon salon "too small" - then rebuild it, supersized, in a palace.
On Tuesday, as the house marked 110 years of its haute couture - a century and more of Coco Chanel's revolution in how women dress - it recreated its atelier inside the freshly restored Grand Palais, turning intimacy into spectacle for a nature-drenched show at Paris Couture Week .
Chanel, whose founder banished corsets and reimagined luxury as liberation, showed just how far that legacy stretches: from the tiny salons of 1915 to its modern colossus.
It was a flex only a handful of luxury giants could pull off - and perhaps, as one front-row guest suggested, a dazzling distraction as the fashion world counts down to the debut of Chanel's new designer Matthieu Blazy .
Penelope Cruz, Naomi Campbell and the house's tightest VIP circle scaled gilded steps, sweating past marble and gold, to enter the reconstructed atelier. The set by Willo Perron was classic Chanel: intimate yet monumental, old world yet futuristic.