Inside the chic duplex that Paris’s hottest hoteliers call home

Husband-and-wife team Adrien Gloaguen and Julie Revuz are behind the Touriste group’s growing portfolio of Paris hotels, commissioning up-and-coming designers and giving them carte blanche to create a unique vision in each venue. But do different rules apply to their own home? In some ways yes, but there’s plenty of crossover.

The couple live in a family-oriented Parisian neighbourhood with their three daughters. They bought their apartment, a duplex with a terrace in a former car park, just before lockdown.

Described by Adrien as ‘like a small house’, the girls’ bedrooms and playroom are on one floor, while the living spaces and Julie and Adrien’s bedroom are on another. ‘All the kids’ stuff upstairs!’ laughs Julie.

Refreshingly forthright, she calls the decor they inherited ‘really crap’. They kept the layout but tasked their secret weapon, Chloé Nègre, to reimagine the tired interiors. Chloé designed their first apartment and Bienvenue and Beauregard, two of their hotels.

‘We decided to work on the first apartment alone,’ recalls Julie. ‘After a year and a half we realised we were not going to be able to finish it so we called Chloé. When we bought the second apartment it was natural to call her. She’s a good friend.’

‘Whether it’s their home or a hotel, the collaboration is joyful and I always feel a mutual trust and a warm understanding,’ says Chloé.

The couple didn’t give her a specific brief, apart from requesting sofas that would make it easy to chat to people on the terrace as well as in the living room, and a huge rattan mirror above the sculptural staircase. ‘She designed it for someone else and I was jealous, so I asked for one, but mine is bigger!’ says Julie with a smile.

Chloé adds, ‘We responded to their desires in terms of colours and materials, but also their family-life constraints, striking a balance between noble materials, bespoke furniture and vintage pieces.’

Headboards are a big deal in the couple’s hotels, so Chloé designed a particularly striking example for their bedroom – Julie’s favourite space. ‘I’m always working on my bed, and the children are coming in and out,’ explains Julie.

Adrien is keen on stainless-steel furniture, so Chloé found shelves by Vittorio Introini, as well as choosing colourful fabrics for the seats and a rug in collaboration with Marguerite Le Maire to satisfy Julie’s love of colour. ‘It’s a joyful ensemble, with an extra twist, just like their family!’ says Chloé.

Touriste was born when the couple realised there were others, like them, who loved travelling and interiors, but didn’t have a huge budget. ‘We were young and it was not possible for us to pay €800 a night, so we decided to do nice design with an affordable price. Our first hotel was like this and, when we saw that people agreed with us, we said,“Okay, we have to continue”,’ Adrien recalls.

Their favourite part of the process is choosing the right person for each project. ‘Sometimes we meet a really talented designer but the feeling is not right,’ Julie says. After initially working with French talent, they decided to look further afield.

In lockdown, Luke Edward Hall was asked to turn an old building near the Gare du Nord into Hôtelles Deux Gares. ‘It was a nice way to start to work with foreign designers because Luke is so young but so professional.’ The couple, born and bred Parisians, now find an outsider’s perspective refreshing.

Many hoteliers would choose to play it safe with their hotel interiors, to appeal to the largest number of guests, perhaps saving more daring decorative ideas for home, but the opposite is true for Julie and Adrien. ‘We take more risks in a hotel; that’s the fun part of our job,’ Julie declares.

If that means custom marshmallow-pink sheets, as requested by Beata Heuman for Hôtel de la Boétie, that’s fine. ‘We never say no to a colour or fabric. We make what we want and we don’t think too much about the clients’ taste, because there will always be someone who will like it!’ she adds. ‘At home it’s different, we have to live with it every day.’

The duo’s latest opening, Château d’Eau, is in the 10th arrondissement, close to Les Deux Gares, Hôtel Bienvenue and Hôtel Panache. ‘It’s a cool part of Paris. I love the energy and the multicultural community,’ says Julie. ‘The hotel was awful, though,’ she recalls, so she and Adrien checked their ‘golden list’ of designers to find the right firm to transform it. One name stood out: Necchi Architecture.

Founders Alexis Lamesta and Charlotte Albert presented a moodboard full of images of 1970s and 80s Parisian nightlife – the heyday of clubs like Le Palace where Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld and Kenzō Takada partied with their glamorous muses Loulou de la Falaise and Betty Catroux.

Adrien is a huge fan of the work of François Catroux, designer and husband of Betty, so Julie remembers, ‘When they said, “It’s a bit about François,” Adrien was so happy! There is a lot of carpet everywhere, stainless steel and plexiglass, and a touch of leopard. It’s our first really sexy hotel.’

From the decadence of Parisian nightclubs to... camping. ‘It was Adrien’s idea!’ laughs Julie. ‘In lockdown he said, “let’s start a new adventure”.’ They bought two campsites, in Brittany and near Bordeaux, and worked with studio Deux-Cé to create the Campings Liberté brand and refresh a series of grey-and-white mobile homes.

‘It was so sad! Campsites have to be joyful, so we put a lot of colour in,’ says Julie. Their toughest critics will be their daughters who, like their parents, have strong opinions. ‘I designed the kids’ rooms thinking about them,’ she admits.

Whether it’s a Parisian hotel, a campsite in the south of France or their own home, this hospitable couple’s savoir faire and ‘anything goes’ approach means every space they create is filled with warmth and a touch of the unexpected. touriste.com