"Fashion is everything," says Armand Hadida, owner of Parisian boutique chain L'Eclaireur. "It's how you wake up, how you walk, how you eat and, of course, how you dress."

Hadida was in Tokyo for the opening of a store in the upscale Minami-Aoyama district. With his wife, Martine, he has spent the last 26 years building a cutting-edge fashion retail business, which has grown from a single 28-sq.-meter store in the basement of a building on the Champs Elysees into a mini-empire including four boutiques and a restaurant in Paris, as well as the new two-story, 200-sq.-meter Tokyo location just across from the new Cartier building.

To this congenial Frenchman, fashion represents more than just a personal style statement. For him, working on the sales floor was a cure for chronic shyness. In the early 1970s, the cash-strapped Hadida reluctantly agreed to stand in for a sick employee at a friend's Paris boutique. When Bridget Bardot walked into the store and approached him for assistance, he turned bright pink while embarking on his pitch, only to find that the superstar actress was hanging on his every word.

"I realized that this was a way to communicate with people, that people would want to listen to me," he says, eyes twinkling.

His love for fashion, he says, comes from a "passion for communication." His stores are "a new generation of retail space" with no hard sell.

The feathered cap-wearing style guru says he will be trying to instill into the sales staff of his new boutique a similar philosophy.

"The aim is to share, not to sell," he insists. "When you visit one of my stores, it's like I'm inviting you to travel with me," he says. "It's a way for people to share in my time, my passion, my point of view."

With a small garden outside the entrance to the store, which has windows with antique shutters, L'Eclaireur Tokyo stocks creations from Belgian rock star clothier Ann Demeulemeester, eclectic ethnic designer Dries Van Noten, avant garde Austrian menswear maestro Carol Christian Poell and Italian leather artisans Haute.

The selection at L'Eclaireur is resolutely experimental, what fashionistas would call "directional." That term, however, contradicts the metaphor Hadida uses to describe his buying philosophy. "We like to walk in the opposite way to everyone else," he says. "Why? Because if you walk in the same direction as everybody else, you lose your soul."

Hadida describes it as "breaking out of fashion's little circle," but in the world of catwalks and couture, he is very much an insider. He is credited with discovering John Galliano, as well as being among the first to carry such names as Dolce & Gabbana, Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen. Referring to his mission to track down exciting new creators, L'Eclaireur means "scout" in French.

But L'Eclaireur does not limit itself to wearable goods -- its notoriety is in no small part due to the "secret room" concept introduced at its Place des Victoires store. Located in the former stables of an 18th century inn, visitors must press a buzzer to gain entry and are asked to turn off their cellular phones once inside. Customers who make a purchase, or build a rapport with the staff, are offered the chance to enter a hidden room filled with objets d'art and antiques.

Although there are no such items for sale at the Tokyo branch, its interior is filled with eye-catching antiquities from Europe that lend the terracotta walled space an ostentatious air. The exterior of the store is a glass wall backed by huge wooden shutters framed in rusting iron. Hadida explains that he deliberately eschews display windows, saying he wants people to come in to the stores as "volunteers" -- not having been mesmerized by flashy mannequins.

The entrepreneur expresses satisfaction with the location of the venture. "It's a good time to be in Aoyama," says Hadida, referring to the recent revamp of Omotesando Station, the new Omotesando Hills mega-mall and the Prada tower, which stands just a stone's throw away from his new store.

This is not the first time L'Eclaireur has opened an outlet in Japan. Its previous incursion into this market, the 1997 launch of a basement boutique in Osaka's Umeda district, was short-lived. This time, though, Hadida is confident that he has found the right partner in Kenji Eto of Styler Culture Mix, an mergers and acquisitions specialist and owner of numerous restaurants and bars, including Aoyama's upscale nightspot Velours.

"For L'Eclaireur Tokyo we have completely followed Hadida's directions," said Eto in a recent interview. "Hadida is my guide and I wanted to make a shop which could capture his vision without any compromises."

There can be no doubt that, in certain respects, this store is not as fantastical as Hadida might have allowed himself to imagine it, but it works well as a portal into his fascinating world. Tokyo's fashionistas have been well served.