Balenciaga’s newest retail statement, slated to open here Tuesday, is a striking composite of its otherworldly stores dotted around the globe: an optical orange slice representing London; green marble a wink to Los Angeles; French chateau floors echoing its historic boutique on Avenue George V.

Balenciaga’s 60th directly operated store — boasting 40 feet of frontage on the bustling Rue Saint-Honoré — also symbolizes how the company has quickly accrued critical mass in retail, which now accounts for more than half of its revenues. (Less than five years ago, it only had three locations.)

A look inside Balenciaga’s Paris flagship.

Balenciaga continues to expand its store network, having already added six locations this year — including in Shanghai, Nanjing and Taiwan — with up to seven more to come before the books close on 2012.

A look inside Balenciaga’s Paris flagship

Already open is a 540-square-foot women’s accessories unit in Venice — where fractal slabs of burgundy marble abut mint green walls — and coming later this summer is a 3,760-square-foot, two-level unit on Rome’s swanky Via Borgognona.

While Balenciaga’s store count is still dwarfed by many of its designer competitors, simply adding doors is no longer the sole focus of the brand, controlled by PPR, parent of Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and other fashion houses. Some units require renovation, while others need to be enlarged.

A look inside Balenciaga’s Paris flagship

Some units in Japan, for example, are only large enough to display about 30 percent of Balenciaga’s collections, whereas Guichot’s goal is to “illustrate the brand fully” in as many locations as possible.

Balenciaga and its influential creative director Nicolas Ghesquière initially earned a reputation for planting stores in offbeat locales, such as the Chelsea art district in New York, Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood in a former tile manufacturer, or Via Santo Spirito in Milan, an off-the-radar branch of the city’s so-called “golden triangle” of retail.

The new Rue Saint-Honoré unit, close neighbor of the hip boutique Colette, joins a burgeoning retail strip, with Moynat and Dsquared2 among recent arrivals, and Chloé and Theory among those coming soon.

A look inside Balenciaga’s Paris flagship

Balenciaga’s space, formerly a gas station, offered the brand a vast, rectangular space of about 3,200 square feet spread over one level — a rarity in a city full of landmark buildings with higgledy-piggledy layouts.

As in all Balenciaga units, Ghesquière and the French contemporary artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster collaborated on the interior concept. She calls the Rue Saint-Honoré store a “catalogue” of its key boutiques, each of which has a different color scheme and mood. (There’s even a preview of the yet-to-be-opened SoHo unit in New York, with an emphasis on the color purple and floral carpets.)

Pedestrians strolling on Rue Saint-Honoré are surely to be struck by the store’s division into vertical strips — like a theater stage with its various backdrops viewed in cross-section.

The brand also continues to make inroads with social networks. It’s amassed more than 350,000 Facebook fans and recently detected a spike in traffic on Twitter as celebrities including Brad Pitt donned Balenciaga for red-carpet appearances during last month’s Cannes Film Festival.

(Via WWD)