HOME
Flowers in Hotels
It is a touch of luxury tradition to be met with a resplendent arrangement of flowers upon entering a hotel.
For the Royal Monceau, this forms a centerpiece that the hotel revisits every few months with the help of skilled artists.
(I invite you to rediscover my article featuring Sylvie Maréchal, who was responsible for decorating the Christmas Tree at the Royal Monceau last December.)
During Design Week in September 2014, the lobby of the Royal Monceau welcomed the creation of Soline d’Aboville, a work entitled “Flowers of Paris”: a carpet of paper flowers crafted to evoke the image of flight and that is sure to take your breath away when you enter the space. Cut from paper images of the Royal Monceau’s iconic map of Paris, these Flowers of Paris compose a true garden à la française revisited.
Soline goes on to describe her creation: “The idea came from a mural fresco by Stéphane Calais, ‘Garden à la française’, which adorns the ceiling of the restaurant La Cuisine. I wanted to recreate a garden à la française by revisiting this concept.
Flowers in Hotels
I was looking to play with the idea of a traditional flower arrangement, all while remaining within the classic set of codes. Little by little, I worked to arrive upon this paper-crafted flower.
It has no real touch of whimsy. In fact, it’s a flower that’s somewhat abstract and mathematical. As you can see, the groove and the cut of the flower are what allowed me to give it its volume. There’s a functionality to the form of the flower itself. What I like about its back-story is the idea of imagining a cut-up map of Paris in the form of a flower. I love this idea that a map of Paris, or any other paper, can become something very pretty and very poetic.”
Meet Soline d’Aboville:
Paris Design Week 2014
Designer-scenographer and graduate of L’ENSAD, Soline d’Aboville has worked since 2001 on crafting artful window displays for Maison Cartier. After spending five years creating the designs for display cases in Louis Vuitton stores all over the world, she found her own agency Manymany in 2008 and has since lent her talent to countless other luxury establishments, including Baccarat, Boucheron, Chanel jewelry, Diptyque, Guerlain, Vacheron Constantin, and Hennessy, among others.
Laurent Delporte, an editor and conference speaker, is a strategic expert in the sector of hotels. A visionary, he brings his unique look on hotels in service to the decision-makers in the industry, whether to enhance the development of new projects or strategic visions.
Laurent has visited and audited over 350 hotels across the world and also participates in mystery visits to provide quality control for the world’s finest hotels.
