Love ’70s Design? Then This Eclectic Paris Pad Is the Home of Your Dreams
A couple of years ago, the owner of this apartment was in France’s rural Auvergne region during the quiet week between Christmas and New Year’s. She took to browsing real estate ads online, deciding to visit some of her discoveries on her return to Paris. “I had no intention of moving,” she insists. “It was simply out of curiosity.”
That was until she stepped inside this 1,900-square-foot duplex in a 19th-century -building on the city’s Right Bank. She’d been drawn by a photo of an almost psychedelic motif of interlocking cubes in metal that lined the walls of the stair hall. “It looked like something from a 1970s nightclub,” she says. What appealed to her more, however, was the apartment’s atmosphere. “It gave me a really good vibe,” she recalls. “It was very cozy, like a cocoon.”
Everything was in working order, and the layout largely suited her. Nonetheless, she called upon one of France’s hottest designers, Pierre Gonalons, for an update. He had recently made a splash with a series of strikingly staged exhibitions of his furniture and lighting collections in grand historic buildings in Paris and Milan. This September, he opens his first U.S. showroom, in New York’s D&D Building, which he will share with French wallpaper manufacturer Atelier d’Offard. His creations are often characterized by an interplay of circles or curvaceous forms, as well as the use of finely crafted materials. A series of lights, for instance, is made from Murano glass with a speckled effect known as macchia su macchia, achieved by an age-old technique.
Living Room
A custom églomisé fireplace anchors the living room of an apartment designed by Pierre Gonalons on Paris’s Right Bank. The leather sofa and armchair are by Pierre Gonalons for Duvivier Canapés, the vintage armchair is in a Métaphores floral, and the walls are painted in Rusling by Little Greene. The artwork is by Jacques Villeglé.
Dining Room
Gonalons designed the custom banquette, twin tables, and chairs in the dining room. The pendants are by Staff Leuchten, and the artwork is by Pierre Seinturier.
The Designer
Pierre Gonalons in the drawing room, in front of a de Gournay wallcovering.
Stair Hall
The walls of the stair hall are sheathed in polished and patinated brass plate in an interlocking cube pattern.
Entrance Hall
A rough oak door frame opens to an armchair by Louis Sognot for Primavera and a photograph by
Philippe Ramette. The wall paint is Pleat by Little Greene.
Kitchen
In the kitchen, black-stained oak cabinets are topped with black Marquina marble; the fittings are by MGS Taps.
Bathroom
The bathroom’s walls and ceiling are tiled in mirrors, which reflect a vintage opal glass pendant. The walls are painted in Mid Azure Green by Little Greene.
Guest Bedroom
The custom bed is in a Métaphores fabric and dressed in linens by Hermès. The nightstand is by Pierre Gonalons for Moissonnier, the rug is by Pinton, and the artwork is by William Wegman.
For the owner of this apartment, Gonalons was the obvious choice to oversee its transformation. “There’s always something a little classical to Pierre’s work, which I thought would work well within this context,” she says. “We weren’t starting with a blank canvas.” Her main requests were to add a touch of warmth and a dose of color, and to create an aesthetic link between the staircase and the apartment’s other eye-catching visual element—a drawing room wrapped in a hand-painted, panoramic de Gournay wallcovering called Japanese Garden. “While the existing decor was certainly fun, it lacked coherence,” notes Gonalons.
The project was in keeping with his creative interests. “I like it when there’s a bit of fantasy,” he says, “and I also love playing with things that are already in place. I’m a firm believer that you don’t need to get rid of everything when redecorating an interior.”
Gonalons maintained the kitchen more or less as it was, keeping the stained-oak millwork and black marble countertops and repainting some walls a pale blue. He also opted not to change the gold-flecked runner on the stairs. In the drawing room, he installed a low-slung, L-shaped arrangement of ottomans and armchairs covered in a diamond-motif fabric of his own design. For Gonalons, it has not only a slightly 1970s optical effect but also conjures a couple of legendary interiors. One is Diana Vreeland’s riotously red Manhattan living room, and the other a room swathed in Indian printed cottons in Lee Radziwill’s London home.
The de Gournay paper also inspired the palette. In the primary bedroom, he hung a honey-toned fabric on the walls. Elsewhere, he chose largely subtle paint colors, including a hint of pink in the sitting room.
Gonalons’s most significant addition comes by way of the fireplace. The chimney breast was clad in large églomisé glass panels backed with a gradation of copper, brass, and silver leaf. The hue gets lighter from bottom to top. “My idea was to give the impression that a fire had burned the mirror at the bottom,” he relates. The metallic squares also provide a perfect bridge between the aurous tones of the wallpaper and the patterned staircase.
The rest of his intervention was largely decorative, the primary bathroom being the only space he reconfigured, in response to a request for a tub. Yet he more than made his mark by incorporating a host of his own creations.
For his client, the result is an extension of the home’s original coziness, with what she calls “a certain eccentricity to the decor.” These days, she likes nothing better than curling up in the drawing room with tea. “When I first came, I thought I’d be living in a nightclub,” she says with a laugh. “In reality, things have turned out rather more sedate.”
This story originally appeared in the September 2023 issue of ELLE DECOR. SUBSCRIBE
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