Les Bains

Studio 54, New York’s most notorious nightclub, is an ancestor of sorts (via Ian Schrager) to the whole boutique-hotel trend. But imagine its Parisian equivalent shutting its doors for a renovation and actually becoming a luxury boutique hotel, and you’ve got the basic idea of what Les Bains is all about. In the late 1800s it was a public spa, and by 1980 Les Bains Douches was a bona fide den of celebrity-studded iniquity.

In its edgiest incarnation it played host to the likes of Bowie, Jagger and Warhol. (Your editor knows it as the site of a famous Joy Division bootleg.) A young Philippe Starck was responsible for its far-out décor, and while it was shut down for structural work it became a venue for pop-up shows by underground street artists. It’s quite a legacy, and its new owner, Jean-Pierre Marois, is the filmmaking son of the man who owned it during its glory years — so he’s got a real interest in making sure it’s true to its conception.

To that end he’s brought in architect Vincent Bastie and designers Tristan Auer and Denis Montel, as well as creative director Alexandre Kellas, best known for Chateau Marmont, in many ways the Los Angeles equivalent of Les Bains. Here they’ve created a space that exhibits an infinity of moods, where each sub-space is a different scene entirely, sometimes bohemian, sometimes baroque, sometimes simply otherworldly. La Salle à Manger is the restaurant and bar, with a menu by the Brazilian chef Bruno Grossi and cocktails by Pietro Costamagna’s team; Le Réservoir is the private dining room, housed in what used to be a water tank.

Meanwhile, upstairs, the bedrooms are soothing simplicity itself, luxe light-filled havens that promise to restore you to health and sanity, no matter what you’ve been up to the night before. It’s not often that a boutique hotel reminds us so vividly of what made us care about hotels in the first place.