Contemporary yet eclectic, and with a few design surprises to put a smile on guests’ faces along the way, Brach Paris is a stylish hideaway sitting right between some of the French capital’s highlights in the upscale 16th arrondissement.
Back in the 1980s, design dick-swinging was big business in the world of hotels, and its maverick king was Paris-born Philippe Starck. The aesthetics of the day were flamboyant, sexy and OTT, and the freshly coined ‘boutique hotel’ concept was the perfect crucible for immersive delivery. Cue the internationally little-known architect and designer Starck’s bodacious design of the Royalton, New York’s lobby for Studio 54’s Ian Schrager in 1984, and a hotel-design revolution was born.
Launched 34 years later, Evok Collection’s Brach Paris in the city’s tony, residential 16th arrondissement once again finds the prolific polymath, now a global design superstar with 20-odd hotels, an iconic furniture portfolio, landmark industrial buildings and several superyachts on his CV, still at peak swagger. ‘Un style de vie’, proposes the hotel’s strapline, and there’s not a detail of Brach Paris’ environment nor guest experience that’s not recruited into Starck’s bold, sexy and meticulously executed artistic vision. And it’s thrilling both style-forward travellers and cool-seeking Parisians with grown-up, vibey socialising in mind.
Radically reimagined, the building’s shell is an undistinguished glass and steel commercial block, formerly a 1970s postal sorting office, set among the neighbourhood’s gorgeous Belle Époque apartment buildings. Arriving guests are ushered by chummy bellmen through the entrance lobby, where the convivial hubbub of the Brach Restaurant, its artsy, modern-bistrôt design and large, open kitchen visible through a glass wall lined with shelves of sculptural African vases, can be heard. Check-in is in the sumptuous first-floor reception salon with a striking ceiling mural by Starck’s daughter Ara, where more achingly cool staff, dressed in a quietly glam mix-and-match capsule collection of retro-ish preppy-chic separates – none more fetching than the snug-fit Le Coq Sportif outfits of the basement Club de Sport staff – welcome you. Here, Starck sets out a playful, eclectic aesthetic fusing 1930s Modernism, Bauhaus, Dada and surrealism with art influences from Africa, Asia and Latin America. It’s clear a stay here is going to be a stimulating affair.
| Perfect for | Fly into | Right on time |
| The Hedonist | CDG | GMT +1 |
| While you’re Out There |
| Just beyond central Paris’ enclosing Boulevard Péripherique, a typically timid (not) 2014 building by starchitect Frank Gehry sits at the edge of the bucolic Bois de Boulogne. A cluster of curvaceous, steel-and-glass sails that look like some colossal, space-age lotus flower rising above the adjacent lake, Fondation Louis Vuitton houses blockbuster exhibitions of world-class modern and contemporary art. The permanent collection includes site-specific installations by Olafur Eliasson and Ellsworth Kelly, works by Basquiat, Jeff Koons and Gilbert and George are among the main attractions, and two special exhibitions – David Hockney, Cindy Sherman and a Warhol-Basquiat four-hander are among recent features – are staged each year. Our tip is to take at least half a day and take a slow, intuitive meander through the vast, six-storey building, whose spaces’ moods morph, thanks to Gehry’s bold Deconstructivist design, as the light changes throughout the day. And time your visit to end on the rooftop terrace for sweeping sunset views across the city. |
The 52 supremely comfortable rooms are generously proportioned (for Paris), high-ceilinged boxes lined with dark rosewood veneer, their lines artfully interrupted with panels of marble, leather, glass, polished concrete and mirror. High shelves carry canny selections of art brut prints, design tomes and African artefacts, mini bars are reimagined as tiny ‘concept stores’ and stocked with a selection of pre-mixed house cocktails in cute, scent-style bottles – even the interiors of wardrobes and flip-flops for guest use are decorated with a custom deconstruction of French impressionist painting. Floor-to-ceiling windows pour daylight into white bathrooms with freestanding soaking tubs and square basins carved into unfinished blocks of marble. Splash out on either the Henri or Annette – two of seven light-flooded suites measuring between 60 and 200 sqm/650 and 2150 sqft – and you can have an Eiffel-view hot tub on your terrace.
The communal spaces, each of which has its own custom scent, fill the building with buzz day and night. Serving flavoursome, healthy, Mediterranean-inspired fare showcasing the best seasonal produce from local terroirs, Brach Restaurant hums with a social, trendy crowd, and has either live music or a DJ set every night of the week. Also helmed by Algerian executive chef Adam Bentalha, who earned his stripes at prestigious Paris’ kitchens including those of Ritz Paris and Shangri-La Paris’ La Bauhinia, Terrasse de 1er Étage is a cool, casual space whose menu combines elevated Asian-inspired dishes and imaginative cocktails. Treating ourselves to an exquisite, aperitif-hour Vigneto on the large terrace, we loved watching groups of fiercely glamorous thirty-something Parisian career women gather beneath giant Asian bay trees draped in fairy lights to swap excited gossip – very Sex et la Cité.
In the basement the Club de Sport features a (bangingly soundtracked) 22m/65ft pool and vast fitness space modelled on a 1930s boxing gym, which, also functioning as a members’ club for locals, had a waiting list as soon as it opened. Here, guests can join the near-100 weekly fitness classes and use the sauna, steam room, thermal pool, and salt cave. The hotel also offers a bijou spa with Clarins treatments.
All of this guarantees that with Brach Paris you’ll not only have a fiercely style-forward address for your stay, you’ll also be folded, should you wish, into a deeply dapper local crowd with partying on their mind.
Is it pretentious? Yes. Is it over-designed? Probably. Is it self-consciously cooler-than-thou? Undoubtedly. But is it a ton of sexy, stylish, grown-up fun? Mais oui.
Photography courtesy of Evok Collection
