HÔTEL BARRIÈRE FOUQUET’S PARIS
Designer: Friedmann & Versace
Location: Paris, France
On offer: For more than 125 years, Brasserie Fouquet’s has drawn artists, filmmakers, and the stylishly restless to the Champs-Élysées. In 1998, Diane Barrière, who had taken the helm of her family’s French hospitality empire, acquired the legendary brasserie and set about building a hotel worthy of it. Six neighboring buildings were absorbed into a single address, and in 2006, Hôtel Barrière Fouquet’s Paris opened its doors. Nearly two decades later, with a newly crowned Palace designation by the French government—the first on the Champs-Élysées to receive the honor—Fouquet’s Paris unveiled La Galerie, a Friedmann & Versace-designed salon that blurs the line between hotel lobby and Parisian living room.
Open daily from morning to night, La Galerie serves as the hotel’s all-day social hub. Braid-edged watered-silk wall coverings, column heads with bronze inserts, and natural stone panels bordered with bespoke wood marquetry set the tone, while a Madeleine Castaing-patterned carpet anchors the room. A central glass dome adorned with a plaster frieze and geometric trompe l’œil diffuses soft light over mahogany armchairs upholstered in floral jacquard and golden-brown mohair velvet, all custom-made by the manufacturer Henryot.
Standout features: Decorative art specialists Blundell & Therrien contributed an intricate painting of Parisian horse chestnut trees, rendered in layers of glue and Blanc de Meudon chalk, waxed and patinated by hand, which is placed beside a four-panel gold-leaf screen depicting birds in flight. Gohard Studio supplied bas-reliefs whose patinas nod to the carefree glamour of 1920s Paris. An extension of the property’s social spaces is the seasonal Fouquet’s Pickleball Club, tucked into the Maison’s Miroir courtyard, bringing an unexpected sporting interlude to one of Paris’s most formal addresses, complete with logoed rackets and endless photo opportunities.
