phillipe starck

Le Meurice: Can a Luxury Paris Hotel Be Surreal?

Of all the art movements to use as inspiration in hotel décor, I'm not sure surrealism would be my first choice. (If I woke up in the morning to the sight of a melting alarm clock, I think I'd summon an ambulance.) So although I'd long known that the artist Salvador Dalí had been a design inspiration during Philippe Starck's renovation of Le Meurice, Paris' most venerable palace hotel, the whole proposition sounded somewhat dubious.

After all, surrealism is about thought unhampered by reason. And I like a luxury hotel that is, at the least, reasonable in its décor if not in price.

What's more, "reasonable" would not be the first adjective associated with Dalí, as a guest of Le Meurice. In his month-long annual stays, he requested a herd of sheep and then proceeded to shoot them with his pistol -- blank bullets, otherwise what a mess. He also requested a horse for reasons unrecorded in hotel history. And freshly caught flies, from the handily placed Tuileries Garden across the street.

Tags: Dali, Luxury Hotels, Paris, Paris Hotels, Paris Travel, Phillipe Starck

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Baccarat Wins Luxist's Editors' Choice Award for Best in Decor

by Carrie Coolidge (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Decor

Baccarat, the French tableware, crystal and lighting company extraordinaire, is the winner of the Luxist Awards' Editors' Choice Award for Best in Decor.

Though it is nearly two and a half centuries old, its pieces are considered to be cutting edge. From its delicately gilded champagne buckets and champagne flutes in the emblematic Baccarat colors to its vases, knife holders and decorative objects---not to mention the exquisite crystal chandelier hanging above, Baccarat is an everlasting fantasy. A Baccarat piece is much more than just a valuable object---it epitomizes a certain concept of fulfillment and perfection.

A table laid with Baccarat is nothing short of a theater of the senses. As one Baccarat lover puts it: "eyes gleam with the sparkle of a thousand reflections". Whether it is wine, champagne or even water, when it is enjoyed from an exquisitely cut Baccarat crystal glass, it is an magical experience that involves all of the senses: taste, touch, hearing, sight and smell.

Gallery: Baccarat Crystal

Tags: awards-main, Baccarat, crystal, editors choice, editors choice award, luxist-awards, phillip starck, Phillipe Starck, winners-decor, winners-editors-choice

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The 1980s Redux at LAN Club in Shanghai

by Alison Wellner (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Dining, Luxury Travel & Hotels

Photo of La Terrace at LAN Club Shanghai

Shanghai's Bund, which runs along the river and divides the city's former international section (with its old world architecture) from Pudong, with its intergalactic hyper-futuristic architecture, isn't a place for subtlety. This divide makes it a place for big statements, particularly of the fashionable variety, which is why this is where you find the city's big name restaurants (Jean Georges, M on the Bund), major international designers and so on. And it made it an entirely logical neighborhood for Chinese restaurateurs South Beauty Group to select for the Shanghai edition of the LAN Club, following on the 2006 success of its Beijing launch, which was designed by Phillipe Starck.

LAN Shanghai, designed by Patrick Gilles and Dorothee Boissier. opened in a historic building just off the Bund last summer, and it's not about subtlety, no, not even a little bit. Its four floors that put me in mind of the clubs that I used to encounter as a teenager in 1980s New York: an adult version of a theme park. There's a dance club, and several bars, and each floor is home to a different restaurants or, if you will, dining concepts, and they've changed a bit since opening. What was once a Chinese restaurant on the first floor has become O-Supper Club, which is doing a Chinese/Tapas fusion. (This sounds more interesting than it tastes); the French restaurant on the fourth floor had a new name, Papillion, named for the 400 butterfly specimens displayed on its walls. And that's not to forget a seafood restaurant, adorned with an aquarium of living jelly fish, an atrium-like space with a wall of plants, and a full floor of VIP private dining rooms, because in a crowded country, it's luxurious to go to a restaurant to be seen and then have total privacy.

One of these rooms, the Art and Banquet Hall, is meant to accommodate a group, and it is genuinely, no-gimmicks impressive: it was designed around the Liu Ziaodong painting, Migrants of the Three Gorges. It's some 30 feet in width, and was, for a time, the most costly work by a contemporary Chinese artist sold at auction. But favorite space was "La Terrace", the lounge on the roof, which opened this past July. It's view of Pudong and the Bund isn't unobstructed, but I rather liked the Shanghai peep show effect, which was enhanced by the pimp-my-ride lit tables.

Gallery: LAN Club Shanghai

Tags: beijing, china, club, entertainment-awards, phillipe starck, PhillipeStarck, shanghai

Louis Ghost Chair

by Rigel Celeste (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Decor

The infamous white (or green) plastic lawn chair finally gets a face lift, and from Phillipe Starck no less. That may or may not have been his intention, but it's what I think of when I see the Louis Ghost Chair. Visibly inspired by the classic Louis XVI armchair, it takes that look and reduces it to simpler shapes and lines. Created from a single mold of transparent polycarbonate, the chairs are a little less intrusive visually than their not-as-classy colored cousins (they may not even admit to being related!) but do share some family traits, such as being easy to clean (just wipe with a damp cloth), suitable for indoors or out, and stackable for storage. £150.

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Tags: chair, ghost, ghost chair, GhostChair, louis, louis ghost chair, LouisGhostChair, outdoor, outdoors, phillipe starck, PhillipeStarck, starck

Baccarat Un Parfait Boxed Set

by Nicole Weston (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Dining

Created by Phillipe Starck for Baccarat, the Un Parfait Boxed Set is an exceptional collection of glassware. The set consists of six black goblets, each made from full-lead crystal. One of the goblets is perfect (un parfait) and is numbered and signed by Starck. Each of the others (cinq imparfaits) has a subtle, but purposeful, flaw and is inscribed with a quote from Jean Cocteau, "A l'impossible je suis tenu," which translates to "I am obliged to do the impossible." Price: $1,999.

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Tags: baccarat, crystal, glassware, imparfait, parfait, Phillipe Starck, PhillipeStarck