9confidentiel hotel by
Philippe Starck
Hotels & restaurants
15 January 2021
Philippe Starck needs no introduction. The inventor of design as it emerged in France in the 1980s is the author of some insane projects. The man who became famous with the first Costes café, in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, is now coming back just a stone’s throw away to imagine a new place: the 9Confidentiel. Nestled in the rue du Roi de Sicile, this establishment of the French group 9Hotel Collection is an ode to his mother’s beauty and to the women of a sophisticated era. It is transcribed like a photo, as « blurred » as it is contemporary… Six floors designed like a jewellery box, with the artistic intervention of his daughter Ara. Starck reveals his inspirations like whispered confidences.
AN INTIMATE AND ROMANTIC SETTING IN THE HEART OF THE MARAIS
Here, the star is the architecture of the building, which originally served as hat factory, and its late Art Deco facade. « This period is marked by a very sophisticated design; a rejection of the avant-garde of the 1920s and a prefiguration of a new classicism, » explains Starck. This paradoxical state of upheaval, this almost surrealist vagueness, defines this hotel in the manner of a jazz song by Anne Sylvestre.
« IN THOSE DAYS, WE DRANK CHAMPAGNE TO FORGET THAT THE WORLD WAS TURNING UPSIDE DOWN… IT’S VERY ROMANTIC! »
« In order to baptise each room, we picked out the most common women’s names at that time. » Names of heroines from a novel by Patrick Modiano, which the designer cites as inspiration for the decoration of this setting « where elegant women disguise their worries and get dizzy with faded romanticism… »
« THIS HOTEL IS A LITERARY ALLEGORY. »
A HOTEL TO LIVE LIKE A DAYDREAM
For celebrations, the bar run by the mixologist Nico de Soto serves cocktails named in homage to the women who live here in an imaginary way: Jeanne, Viviane, Aurore, Coco… « A place forgotten by time where you can feel protected from the outside world and be stunned in a poetic blur. »