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Interior designer Dorothée Meilichzon has transformed the Experimental Chalet Val d’Isère hotel in the village of Val d’Isère, France, with interiors informed by skiing and the surrounding mountains and forests. More
French interior designer Dorothée Meilichzon has converted the restaurant of London’s Henrietta Hotel into an homage to Parisian bistros for chef Jackson Boxer.
Set on the ground floor of the hotel’s 19th-century townhouse in Covent Garden, Henri serves classic French dishes with a British twist – and British produce – from grilled snails on skewers to a raclette burger au poivre.
Henri is the restaurant of London boutique hotel HenriettaThe mishmash of influences in Boxer’s cooking is also reflected in Meilichzon’s interiors, where art nouveau details rub shoulders with the oakwood panelling and leather upholstery found in London’s public houses.
“We have designed an interior that mixes the relaxed style of a traditional British pub with the elegance of a typical French brasserie,” the designer told Dezeen.
The interior merges typical features of pubs and brasseriesGuests enter the restaurant via an informal bar area, where snacks and aperitifs are served on red Coralito marble counters.
Bulbous brass lights and table lamps with scalloped shades informed by plum blossoms provide points of brightness in the dimly lit interior, chosen as a tribute to Covent Garden’s former life as a fruit and vegetable market.
Meilichzon created custom seating banquettes for the restaurantForest-green paint adds to the cosy pub atmosphere, together with the dark timber wainscoting and the bar with its leather-upholstered stools.
The entrance also introduces Belle Epoque details such as spherical lights and gridded mirrored panels to create a sense of continuity with the main dining room.
Dorothée Meilichzon nods to Alice in Wonderland for Cotswolds hotel interior
“We have used some art nouveau elements typical in a brasserie: the detail on the arms of the banquettes, frosted glass globes, Thonet chairs and bespoke organic suspensions,” Meilichzon said.
Despite the restaurant’s small footprint, Meilichzon managed to squeeze in several banquettes with decoratively curved backrests and hidden cutlery storage, designed bespoke for the interior.
The benches are finished in velvet and leatherNear the entrance, there are smaller booths upholstered in duck-egg blue leather and velvet, with a lacquered frame in a darker midnight hue.
But as the space widens towards the open kitchen at the back, the palette becomes warmer and cosier with terracotta wall tiles and larger banquettes for sharing, finished in rust-coloured velvet with glossy red arms and backrests.
The restaurant’s existing ceiling murals were retainedAccompanied by classic bentwood bistro chairs from Thonet, Henri’s marble-topped tables with their dramatic skirts were also custom-made for the restaurant.
Ornamentation is provided by an eclectic mix of artworks and photographs, framed alongside several mirrors and blackboards listing the daily specials.
Meilichzon also created custom marble-topped tables for the restaurantMeilichzon also retained the restaurant’s existing floral ceiling murals, hand-painted on-site by French artists, that provide a counterweight to the rigid grid of the honeycomb parquet flooring.
Henri is the latest in a long line of collaborations between Meilichzon and the Experimental Group, a French hospitality group for which she has also designed hotels in Venice, Ibiza, Biarritz and the Cotswolds.
The photography is by WeTheFoodSnobs.
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French interior designer Dorothée Meilichzon has created the interior for boutique hotel Cowley Manor Experimental, adding chequerboard details and hidden keyholes to the rooms of the former country house.
Meilichzon drew on the history of the Cowley Manor Experimental, which is said to have inspired author Lewis Carroll to write Alice in Wonderland, when designing the interior for the hotel.
According to the hotel, Caroll was walking in the gardens of the then Cowley Manor with Alice Liddell – for whom he wrote Alice in Wonderland – when he saw a rabbit disappear down a hole under a hedge.
Nodding to the chessboard around which the classic story is constructed, Meilichzon designed bespoke chequerboard carpets that were produced by Hartley & Tissier.
The designer added baldachin beds and colourful accents to the bedroom suites”Alice is subtly spread all over the place,” the designer told Dezeen.
“Small doors are hidden in the rooms for the White Rabbit, there are hidden keyholes, rabbit ears, hearts and spades on the checkerboard carpet,” she explained.
“We have used the checkerboard in many ways: hand-painted, tiled, on fabrics and wallpaper.”
Touches of rattan, mixed with strong colour, glossy lacquer and lava stone feature throughout the 36-room hotel. Large bedroom suites have baldachin beds and interiors accented with blurred maple and verdigris.
The games room features chequerboard rugsThe project, which Meilichzon designed for Experimental Group, saw her update an existing hotel at the site, which sits within 55 acres of Cotswolds countryside. The hotel also incorporates a spa, restaurant, cocktail bar, lounge, library and living rooms.
Other than respecting the heritage-listed elements of the property, Meilichzon had full design freedom.
Heritage-listed elements of the existing Cowley Manor were preserved”Historical buildings are something we are used to; we work a lot in Europe and often in very old buildings,” the designer said.
“So we always try to respect them and start from there: the shape of the space, an architectural detail, a listed element.”
Hotel Il Palazzo Experimental designed to be “deeply rooted” in its Venetian setting
Meilichzon combined classical and contemporary elements, keeping all historical listed elements from the building, such as doors, wooden panels and windows.
However, she added “some modernity through the furniture, the geometric patterns and colours,” she said.
Hearts derived from the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland are worked into the stair carpet”Colour is everything, I am really not a grey and beige person,” explained Meilichzon.
The hotel also features a restaurant and cocktail bar by chef Jackson Boxer that is focused on Cowley Manor’s kitchen garden, which has increased in size and is growing wider varieties of produce. The cocktail bar features a lacquered blue bar and tables.
The bar has blurred walnut panelling and blue lacquered tablesMeilichzon, founder of Paris-based design agency Chzon, is a frequent collaborator of Experimental Group and has designed the interiors for several of its properties.
“I see my work for Experimental Group as separate pieces but with a common DNA – the same hand. Because they are context-based, a hotel in Menorca cannot look the same as one in Venice or in the Cotswolds,” she said.
Earlier this year, she gave a bohemian refresh to Ibiza’s first hotel, now called the Montesol Experimental, and has also renovated a Belle Epoque-era hotel in Biarritz, France.
The photography is by Mr Tripper.
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French interior designer Dorothée Meilichzon has renovated a Belle Epoque-era hotel in Biarritz, France, blending maritime and art deco motifs to add contemporary flair to the historic building.
The Regina Experimental sits on a clifftop overlooking the Bay of Biscay in the French seaside city, which was once a royal getaway and is now a popular surfing destination.
Nautical designs decorate the corridorsConstructed in 1907 by architect and landscape designer Henry Martinet, the grand building features a 15-metre-high atrium, large bay windows, a glass roof, and hints of art deco throughout.
The majority of its spaces were well preserved, so Meilichzon’s input involved modernising the furnishings and decor – adding colour and pattern to enliven the spaces while playing on the hotel’s coastal location.
Totemic sculptures were used in the hotel’s atriumIn the light-filled atrium, dark red and green sofas were arranged to create intimate seating areas within the expansive room.
Totemic wicker sculptures form a line down the centre of the room, and cylindrical paper lanterns by designers Ingo Maurer and Anthony Dickens hang from the columns on either side.
Guest rooms feature geometric, art deco-influenced headboards and striped upholsteryGuests in this space are served cocktails from a bar top shaped like an ocean liner, designed as an homage to modernist architect Eileen Gray, while listening to live piano music.
While the bar top nods to Gray’s designs, the sofas in the room play on the shapes of the Itsasoan footbridge in nearby Guétary.
Mirrors wrapped in rope continue the maritime theme in the roomsCarpet patterns vary between the different areas of the hotel – in the corridors, they carry a nautical motif, while the markings are reminiscent of fish scales in the guest rooms.
The hotel’s restaurant, Frenchie, offers Basque-inspired cuisine within a bright room that features more nautical references, such as rope-hung shelves and shell-shaped sconces.
Shell-shaped sconces decorate the dining roomHighly patterned tiled floors and furniture contrast the restaurant’s neutral plaster walls and ceiling, which are punctuated by arched niches and curved plywood panels.
The dining area spills onto an outdoor terrace, populated by red cafe tables and chairs lined up against pale blue banquettes, around the corner from a swimming pool.
Ibiza’s first hotel gets bohemian refresh from Dorothée Meilichzon
The hotel’s 72 guest rooms are accessible from corridors that wrap around the atrium, and face either the ocean or the Golf de Biarritz Le Phare golf course.
Shades of blue and green dominate the art deco-influenced bedrooms, which feature glossy geometric headboards and marine-striped upholstery.
A cool palette of greens and blues is used in the bathroomsSmall lamps extend from rope frames that wrap around the mirrors, and red accents on smaller furniture pieces pop against the cooler hues.
“Bedrooms are awash with Japanese straw and rope combined with marine stripes and plaster frescoes with aquatic motifs,” said the hotel. “Evocative of an ocean liner, each bedroom incorporates curved forms and long horizontal lines.”
Built in 1907, the hotel overlooks the Bay of Biscay from a clifftopMeilichzon, founder of Paris-based design agency Chzon, is a frequent collaborator of the Experimental Group, and has designed the interiors for several of its properties.
Earlier this year, she gave a bohemian refresh to Ibiza’s first hotel, now called the Montesol Experimental, and previously completed the Hotel Il Palazzo Experimental in Venice.
The photography is by Mr Tripper.
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