Give your stay in the French capital an edge by staying in one of its style-driven boutique hotels. John Brunton rounds up some of the best.
While boutique hotels continue to spring up all over the world, in Paris the discerning traveller can choose from a tempting range of design-led properties. The elegant, style-conscious French have given their gurus of haute couture and design carte blanche to create a highly original kind of hotel. Some are as expensive as historic properties such as the Hôtel de Crillon and the Ritz, but then the experience of staying in a Philippe Starck studio, a Jacques Garcia bedroom or a Christian Lacroix suite is very different from the classic luxury of, say, a Four Seasons property or an Intercontinental hotel.
Hôtel Costes
This exclusive property began the trend of designer hotels in Paris when it opened in 1991, and it remains the preferred address for movie stars, fashion designers, rock bands and anyone keen to rub shoulders with international celebrities and those wealthy enough to afford the room rates. It is difficult to pinpoint what is the exact secret of Costes. Interior designer Jacques Garcia made it the flagship of his flamboyant baroque style, which has now been copied all over the world, while Costes music CDs are played – and pirated – on every continent.
This is a hotel with attitude, where even the bellboy looks like a budding actor, so don’t expect the friendliest of service. The brooding, dark bar is perfect for avoiding the paparazzi, and it’s essential to book ahead for the restaurant, although the cuisine doesn’t quite live up to the prices – shrimps roasted over Thai herbs for e34, accompanied by a classic lettuce salad for €14.
The rooms are all decorated in a slightly different style, and Garcia succeeds in creating a décor that is rich and elegant yet cosy and comfortable. And then there is the subterranean pool and spa – definitely the best place for swimming in Paris.
239 rue Saint-Honore; tel +33 142 445 000; hotelcostes.com
Rooms from €400
Hôtel de Sers
When the sleek Hôtel de Sers opened in 2004, it made young hotelier Thibault Vidalenc one of the movers and shakers of the Paris hotel scene. Using his cousin, Thomas Vidalenc, as architect, he has created an understated hotel that fits perfectly with the exclusive haute couture mentality of the Champs Elysées area in which it is situated.
Built in the 1880s as a private mansion for the Marquis de Sers, the property looks nondescript from the outside but once you enter you find yourself in a luxurious environment where Louis XV chairs sit alongside funky psychedelic sofas. The top floor suites have splendid views over the city, and the bar and elegant restaurant are popular meeting places for both smart-suited businessmen and chic fashionistas.
41 avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie; tel +33 153 237 575; hoteldesers.com
Rooms from €550
Mama Shelter
The latest hot address to open up, Mama Shelter risks causing a series of revolutions in the Paris hotel industry. First of all, the concept here is cheap chic, with some rooms being sold for as little as e79 a night. But this is not any old chic – the hotel, which opened its doors in September last year, is designed by Philippe Starck, so guests can enjoy his hallmark quirkiness while making use of the iMac and free wifi in each room. The hotel building used to be a multi-storey carpark, and the location – the gritty 20th arrondissement – looks like a disaster, but then this could soon be transformed into the next Notting Hill or New York’s East Village.
The man behind the concept is Serge Trigano, ex-president of Club Med, who has plans for seven more of these “urban residences” around Europe. When booking, be aware that there is a big price difference between a basic – and pretty small – Mama room, and a Mama Luxe or Deluxe room.
109 rue de Bagnolet; tel +33 143 484 848; mamashelter.com
Rooms from €79
Hôtel Sezz
Situated just by the Eiffel Tower in the elegant seizième arrondissement, after which the hotel is named, this is an ultra-modern boutique property hidden behind a classic façade. This time the designer is not Philippe Starck but one of his talented protégés, Christophe Pillet. Pillet’s furniture is very different from the shock designs of Starck, so expect bright colours contrasted with textured stone walls and black lacquered wooden floors.
There is no real lobby or even a check-in area here, as each guest is assigned their own butler. The hotel doesn’t have its own restaurant either, but rather an exclusive Veuve Clicquot champagne bar. After a hard day’s business or sightseeing, there is a tempting wellness centre with a spa pool, steam bath and massage room.
6 avenue Frémiet; tel +33 156 752 626; hotelsezz.com
Rooms from €252
Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme
International hotel group Hyatt gave more or less a free hand to US architect and interior designer Ed Tuttle for his first European project, the Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme. The aim was to create the first “designer palace hotel”, to compete directly with the likes of Parisian favourites Le Meurice and Plaza Athénée.
Renowned for his creation of the Aman hotels in Phuket and Bali, Tuttle has taken a different approach with the Paris-Vendôme. Whereas his hotels in Asia have always taken the visitor aback on first sight, the Hyatt here has an almost gentle feeling as you enter a minimalist reception marked only by a large bronze-like sculpture from French artist Roseline Granet. Her distinctive creations could have been inspired by Giacometti, and Tuttle uses her work as the leitmotif for the whole hotel, with every room featuring at least one of her pieces.
Although it’s not apparent from the outside, the hotel has been formed from five 19th-century Belle Epoque buildings, and has nearly two hundred rooms. There is a beautiful marble fireplace in the lobby – a favourite spot for a romantic rendezvous – as well as a small bar, a casual coffee shop-style restaurant, and a delightful gourmet eatery where diners can sit inside around an open grill, or outside in a glass-covered gazebo complete with olive trees. Be warned that the chef patissier creates utterly irresistible desserts.
5 rue de la Paix; tel +33 158 711 234; paris.vendome.hyatt.com
Rooms from €530
Hôtel le A
Situated on a quiet side-street off the Champs-Elysées, the A has only 25 bedrooms and has been a huge hit with wheelers and dealers of the global art world since it opened in 2003. The highly distinctive design of this hotel is the result of a collaboration between an architect, Frédéric Mechiche, and an artist, Fabrice Hybert, who manage to both complement and contrast each other.
You get the impression that if the architect had worked alone, the A would be a shrine to minimalist black and white. The salon reading room has black sofas and white walls, and the breakfast salon and evening lounge bar feature white furniture against matt black tables. But the joker that upsets this chessboard palate is the vivid, graffiti-like artist Hybert, whose vast canvases and frescoes break up the background in every part of the hotel.
Each room in the hotel has a different painting and theme and the result is similar to the Art’Otels in Budapest and Berlin, which showcase the works of a single artist. This being Paris, though, the A has also made its name as a fashionable rendezvous for the media and fashion crowd, who fill up the bar from the early evening onwards.
4 rue d’Artois; tel +33 142 569 999; paris-hotel-a.com
Rooms from €204
L’Hôtel
This intimate address, hidden down a Left Bank backstreet just by the School of Fine Arts, is one of Paris’s oldest hotels and has attracted celebrities from the day it opened – from Oscar Wilde, who died here, and Jean Cocteau, whose drawings decorate the lobby, to rock stars such as Jim Morrison and Mick Jagger, who always insisted on staying at “The Hotel”. However, the property became seriously run down and was more notorious than famous until an opulent renovation two years ago. Today it has been reborn as a romantic 20-room designer hotel with sumptuous suites bearing evocative names such as “bijou” and “mignon”. The basement has been transformed into a chic spa, while the restaurant’s chef, Philippe Bélissent, has already won a Michelin star.
13 rue des Beaux-Arts; tel +33 144 419 900; l-hotel.com
Rooms from €345
Kube
Kube was the first boutique hotel in Paris to offer trendy accommodation in a desperately untrendy neighbourhood, albeit not that far from the Eurostar terminal at Gare du Nord. The 18th arrondissement may be famous for the Sacré-Coeur church and street artists of Montmartre, but the Kube is located in the gritty La Chapelle quarter, where you’re best arriving by taxi than by wandering the streets.
This hasn’t stopped it being a huge success, however, and the owners have continued the trend with the equally hip Murano property, just by République. This is the hotel where it is hip to be square, and the Kube cleverly mixes retro-chic and futuristic design with cube-shaped rooms, lobby and lifts.
The rooms are a colourful alternative to the sleek metallic interiors you find in many hotels and, for fun, there are no keys as the receptionist takes a print of your fingertip when checking you in, allowing you to access your bedroom by pressing on a small pad by the door. What’s more, Paris’s first ice bar – the Ice Kube, of course – has become a cool meeting place for late-night Parisian revellers.
1-5 passage Ruelle; tel +33 142 052 000; muranoresort.com
Rooms from €210
One By The Five
The latest creation from the group who used fashion stylist Christian Lacroix for the acclaimed Hotel Le Bellechasse, One By The Five takes design hotels to the extreme – this is an exclusive concept of one suite made up of six “fantasy” rooms by interior designer Philippe Vaurs.
The pièce de résistance is the bedroom, where lighting creates an illusion of the bed floating in space. One By The Five is adjacent to its bigger sister property, the Five, so if splashing out on a whole hotel just for yourself sounds a bit excessive, there are more affordable rooms next door.
3 rue Flatters; tel +33 143 315 231; onebythefive.com; thefivehotel.com
Costs €995.50
Hôtel Bourg Tibourg
This tiny hotel in the heart of the Marais resembles a designer doll’s house, and it is a real find in terms of value for money. Owned by another member of the Costes family, though independent from Hôtel Costes, the design again bears the imprint of Jacques Garcia. Here he has created an exotic, oriental world with perfumed candles, incense, Moorish furniture inlaid with delicate mother-of-pearl, Murano glass chandeliers, and sofas that look as though they have come from a Sultan’s harem.
The mood is irresistibly romantic, especially if you splash out on one of the small suites, which have their own Byzantine salon. As space is strictly limited, don’t expect the rooms to be extra large – some do have small balconies – and there is neither a restaurant nor bar, although the Marais is brimming with eating and drinking possibilities. Breakfast is served either in an ancient vaulted cellar or in a tiny garden if the weather is fine.
19 rue du Bourg-Tibourg; tel +33 142 784 739; bourgtibourg.com
Rooms from €180
