Paris Hôtel Plaza Athénée: modern sensibility meets historic charm

There are luxury hotels in Paris, and then there is 'Le Plaza' as Parisians like to call the Plaza Athénée. A stronghold of serene perfection, the hotel radiates haut monde elegance at 25 Avenue Montaigne with its perfectly symmetrical red awnings and window boxes bursting with scarlet geraniums.

The story goes that Marlene Dietrich had a hand in creating the crimson dressing of the stone-cut façade, which was built in 1913 in classic Haussmannian style. During the war, Dietrich's lover was the dashing French actor Jean Gabin, and together, the glamourous couple were regular guests at the hotel in the early 1940s. On one occasion, Gabin asked the hotel to decorate the balcony of their suite with 100 red roses, but as this was not possible, the staff used red geraniums as a substitute, which very much pleased the notoriously difficult German film star. To immortalise this romantic gesture, and as a tribute to Dietrich herself, who lived at No. 12 Avenue Montaigne in her later years until her death at the age of 90 in 1992, the hotel gave every balcony the same treatment with its own gentle floral cascade of red blooms.

It may be a well-worn tale, but the hotel's geranium-inspired 'geste d'amour' is indicative of an enduring sentiment upheld by the management here: that perfect service isn't simply defined by scrupulous attention to detail; it’s the magic surrounding these details that matters. Arguably, it's this ability to operate 'over and beyond' expected luxury that has endeared the Parisian hotel to an inordinately large number of superstars, tycoons and heads of state over the decades.

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Indeed, the Plaza Athénée has been welcoming the beau monde (AKA the A-list) for just under a century. Historically, the guest list has counted princes and presidents as well as great industrialists such as the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, not to mention music legends (Josephine Baker lived here for a while and Mick Jagger has been a regular since the '70s) and stars of the big screen, among them Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly and Alfred Hitchcock.

Incidentally, there exists an amusing picture of a suited Hitchcock taken by François Gragnon in 1959 which shows the legendary director playing dead, strangled by a tie attached to a coat hook in the hallway of his Plaza suite.

It’s impossible not to fall into a delightful rabbit hole when you’re researching the hotel given the number high profile guests who have stepped into its haloed lobby. French publisher Assouline did, in fact, publish a book about Le Plaza in 2015, but some historical nuggets are worth repeating since they spotlight the hotel's enduring mythology which is nonetheless tinged with drama and the spirit of avant-gardism.

For example, hotel's famous Art Deco restaurant, Le Relais – modelled on the dining hall of the French luxury liner S.S Normandie, considered the fastest and most stylish way to travel from New York to Europe in the 1930s – was used as a cafeteria by American soldiers during the Liberation.

Femme fatale and glamorous exotic dancer Mata Hari was residing in room 120 when she was arrested in 1917 for being a German double agent.

On a less scandalous note, the hotel is famed for its fashion kudos, and not just because the final episode of Sex in the City was filmed here. (Although, while we are on the subject of the show, cast your mind back to a coquettish Carrie Bradshaw kitted out in stripey Sonia Rykiel as she revels in the view from her geranium festooned balcony.)

But the sartorial legacy of the hotel goes back much further than Carrie and her crew. Christian Dior, opened his first boutique at number 30 Avenue Montaigne in 1946 and presented his inaugural collection at Le Plaza a year later, marking a new epoch in haute couture thanks to his trailblazing New Look: designs characterized by their whittled waists, exaggerated hips and soft shoulders. In fact, such was his affection for the Parisian address, that Monsieur Dior named his era-defining 'Bar Suit' after the hotel's basement watering hole, Le Bar Anglais. The salute has come full circle, too, with the hotel's Dior Institut (seen below), a luxury spa located on the lower ground floor.

And so back to those magic details, which can't really be measured according to the barometer of excellence you would typically apply to a 5-star ranking hotel. It goes beyond that. For example, after the evening's 'turn down' service in your suite, you'll find embroidered slippers by your bedside; only they aren't just placed on a matching silkened mat, they are positioned at a very precise angle, pointing away from the bed frame, so as to facilitate the smooth manoeuver of your feet from mattress to footwear in one seamless ‘swoop’. You'll also find your toiletries artfully re-arranged on the bathroom shelf, perfume bottle equidistant from moisturiser jar, as if each item's rightful place has been methodically mapped out by ruler.

With the exception of the top two floors of the hotel which are designed in an Art Deco style - the décor throughout Le Plaza (which underwent a major refurbishment in 2014) is a triumph of French classicism with flourishes of Versailles opulence, best exemplified by spectacular crystal chandeliers and soft shimmering fabrics with a commendable absence of heavy floral and flock patterns especially in the rooms. This is down to French interior designer Marie-Jose Pommereau who was keen to capitalise on the natural light of the building and hence chose to dress each palatial apartment in sumptuous light reflective soft furnishings and silks. By contrast, the ballroom, known as Le Salon Haute Couture – conceived by illustrious architect/scenographer/designer Bruno Moinard, who is also responsible for most of the ground floor including the verdant ivy-lad courtyard, below – is every bit the Louis XVI's banquet hall; a lavish patch of red and gold excess lit by a clusters of extravagant chandeliers.

Room 361 is apparently the most sought-after classic suite. The majestic space offers a fairytale view of the Eiffel Tower as well as a gentle colour palette of dusty pink and dove grey, the emblematic tones of the Dior couture house, applied to undulant drapes, plumped velvet pouffes, enormous fauteuils and cord-edged cushions. The apartment also features a baby grand piano making it the unofficial ‘musician’s suite’. John Legend, we were told, had just checked out. Mariah Carey is a fan of the Plaza too, though she prefers suite 461 (below), known as the 'Signature Eiffel' which has such an implausibly majestic view of the monument, that you have to remind yourself that's not some kind of painterly special effect.

The other jaw-dropper is the deco-themed Terrace Duplex Suite, which, as the name suggests, has its own private terrace high above the Parisian rooftops, as well as its own fitness room and sauna.

The true centerpiece of the Plaza Athénée is of course the three Michelin-starred Alain Ducasse restaurant. Designed by Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku, the space looks like the inside of a shaken champagne bottle: an oasis of fizzy, shimmering beauty achieved thanks to a ceiling that supports hundreds of suspended crystal drops which seem to float against a backdrop of pure white, also the colour of the plush carpet, ionic-style columns and unusual elliptical chairs. A sense of ‘retro futurism’ also shines through here thanks to a number of circular silver-chrome banquettes which look like giant mercury drops, though these shiny seating ‘pods’ are in fact inspired by the shape of old aristocratic service bells.

And if you can't get a table to sample Ducasse’s trailblazing meat-free menu which creates masterpieces out of fish, vegetables and 'organic cereals', the décor is no less arresting at breakfast, if a soupçon less sparkly given the amount of natural light that pours in from the courtyard. Why would this matter though, when every inch of this uber-stylish modern palace, is imbued with such dazzling history?