PARIS, FRANCE
SAINT JAMES PARIS 圣·詹姆斯巴黎酒店 Designer Bambi Sloan Contributor Saint James Paris
This unfathomable lady has invented the "crazy chic" style! Bambi Sloan conjured up a wild vision of a private house. Paying due respect to the building's intrinsic splendor and with more than a touch of impertinence regarding the interior design, she proceeded to offer her romantic interpretation of some residence belonging to an original, enlightened preeminent 19th-century bourgeois family. Her mind-blowing decoration is causing a wind of elegant eccentricity to blow over the Saint James Paris, turning the venerable institution into a unique, unclassifiable venue. Taking Napoleon III style as a starting point, which she describes as a
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"pileup of all styles", the designer has blended fiction and reality, and historical, movie and literary references. The lobby is all black and white, every bit a chic tuxedo jostled by pop art. Then there is a deliberate optical play on mirrors multiplying special effects of randomly-striped balusters, black-rimmed mouldings like so many velvet-lined frills all drawn into a dizzying kaleidoscope of floors rising to infinity. As with a private house, Bambi has dressed up the bedrooms one by one, choosing the appropriate fabric, furniture, paintings and special adornments for each one, often bargain-hunting across France and abroad to find that rare piece.
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