A cool new hotel in Paris’ 13th arrondissement had its interiors designed by Pauline d’Hoop and Delphine Sauvagnet of the Favorite Agency is a blend of a private club, an upscale B&B and a boutique hotel.
The 50-bedroom COQ combines the comfortable feel of a family home with the highest boutique hotel services. A key thrust is of the hotel is that it feels like a club run for its members.
Pauline d’Hoop and Delphine Sauvaget from the Favorite Agency, are two young designers trained at the Arts Déco School, whose first hotel this is.
Confident of their intuition, the decoration is simple, strong and effective, not there to hog the attention, but to provide a welcome and warmth – benevolent but never overbearing.
The ground floor features a cosy dining room where guests can relax, chat, read a book beside the fireplace, enjoy a glass of wine while listening to proper vinyl records, play board games, or watch films on the large screen beside the Winter Garden, with a nice tray of cheese and charcuterie. The veritable home from home atmosphere is clear.
Throughout the hotel, everything has been thought out in detail. Most of the furniture, soft furnishings, objects, decorations and artwork has either been lovingly drawn, designed or bargain-hunted, one by one, by Delphine and Pauline. Much of the interior offers a mix and match of classical French painting, 1950s Danish and 1980s Milan styles – such as the Memphis lamp and a black and white Zanotta dining table found at Sotheby’s.
This eclectic style produces a gentle harmony, similar to the Farrow & Ball deep blue used on the walls infusing the atmosphere, softening it and making it warmer and more stylish, sensual and sincere. Outside fashion, outside hotel codes, the C.O.Q. living room is a friendly place, simultaneously masculine and feminine.
There are 50 rooms, all different, all connected, with materials combining comfort and refinement. As there no mini-bars in the room, guests are encouraged to be convivial,at the bar. The cool, sincere aesthetic is for design lovers who want to spend time in a space somewhat removed from the daily reality that it is directly connected to the location they have chosen – a boutique establishment in the 13th arrondissement.
The Favorite Agency says that the hotel is a perfect alliance of warm practicality and pure elegance with nothing left to chance, from the hound’s-tooth carpet to the brass plumbing fixtures, from the made-to-measure, open and spacious 50s-style dressing table/wardrobes to the Charlotte Perriand wall lamps. In the New York-style bathrooms, there are specially-designed mirrors which are enhanced by adapted lighting playing off a distinctive black and white herringbone pattern.
Everything, absolutely everything has been thought out – and thought out again – for the well-being of guests: the size of the cushions, the lighting, the top-quality connected equipment, the premium sound proofing and the made-in-France mattresses by Nid’Or.
So whether guests are having a rest or having fun downstairs, the C.O.Q. – a community of quality – is naturally embodied in the quality of the noble products, but also, and above all, in the quality of human interaction to be found there.
