Like a warm and yet radical tree house, filled with light, high up in a building with modernist overtones

I’m 32, I’m an interior designer, and I’ve been living and working with Florent since 2018.

I’m 35. I’m also an interior designer. We live and work in Paris.

We met at the École Camondo, where we were studying architecture. We’re from the class of 2015 (editor’s note: as is Clément Daventure, from the Orsini Daventure duo). We both worked in agencies when we left the Camondo, but we very quickly came to the conclusion we should work together in a more structured and professional way. Kim went to London, to an agency where she did a lot of retail work (editor’s note: interior design for points of sale), then came back to Paris, where she worked for Charlotte Perelman, and I worked for Starck.

I wanted to do hotels: it was a childhood dream! Starck was the ideal agency for this. And very instructive, too. These were large-scale hotel projects that were quite significant in terms of size, budget and number of rooms, involving a huge number of people and requiring a great deal of technical precision, because, at this scale, there’s no room for approximation, etc.

We had the opportunity to work on our first project together. It was for the Design Parade in Toulon in 2018. We delivered a small reading room designed like a little troglodyte library. We called it Grotto. We designed an entire wall filled with niches. In a broader sense, at the school, we started to work together on some projects, professional affinities developed, and certain ways of working came together: all this was already apparent during our studies. Inevitably, when you find a good work partner, you want to carry on together.

We already trusted each other. Whether it’s at school or afterwards, it’s difficult to work alone and feel totally confident when submitting a project proposal. Two people are stronger, and we trust each other’s vision and taste.

Florent has retained his taste for accumulating things. You can’t see it at home because we decided to go in a different direction when we arrived here. But it’s true that he loves objects, and he’s passed on to me a taste I didn’t necessarily have at the outset. He’s shown me that even a small object has a story, and you can create a kind of family of pieces that interact with each other, even if they sometimes have nothing to do with each other.

Objects have souls! And I love researching our finds.

Personally, I like things that are a bit “sharper”, the design of the 1980s and 1990s. Florent tends to be more imaginative. But by living and working and spending all our time together, we’ve developed a sort of shared taste without even needing to say anything to each other.

The building that housed the flat we rented was up for sale. We knew we were leaving, so we started looking for a new place to live. It took us a while! I love viewing apartments; that’s my problem. I’m very fussy, and I viewed 25. This one was the 26th. We wanted something a little original for a first purchase. We never thought we’d find an apartment like this in a building that dates back to the late 1960s or early 1970s. It wasn’t what we were looking for, and the advert didn’t really appeal. Finally, one fine day, we visited it… Despite the wallpaper, the light was superb, and the space was divided up by too many partitions… We loved the two levels separated by a few steps, which gave us the impression of being in a tree house and the bathroom, where we kept the slightly kitsch original marble. We could see ourselves here. We also loved the entrance to the building. It was designed by Jean Gouriou, which gives it the impression of being in Milan! On the other hand, there was a lot of work to be done.

We kept the bathroom and simply repainted the walls above the marble and removed the bidet. As for the rest, we tried to bring out the original design, and the plan of the apartment, which had been drowned out by the somewhat hasty work carried out over the decades. The accumulation of ‘little touches’ meant that the space had become impossible to ‘read’. We also wanted to bring out the mineral character of the place, in response to the building, where stone is very prominent. Then, we devised our own version of the post-war boom utopia we were talking about earlier: living with plush, white carpets in the main room, for example. The most important thing for us was also to rest our eyes. That’s why most of the colours in the apartment are quite neutral, because we wanted to achieve this harmony. Our bedroom had to be in keeping with the rest, i.e. very soft. We wanted to play on the light that comes in here at night. The decor is simple: a large wall of curtains. Like an enveloping cocoon. You don’t feel like you’re in Paris any more. And nowhere else, for that matter!

This fruit bowl, sitting on the dining room table. It was made by Christofle in the 1930s. We came across it without knowing what it was, but I did some research and discovered that it was part of a collection designed for the famous liner Normandie. It’s a real piece of our decorative arts history!

Personally, I’d like to talk about our kitchen, which is all stainless steel and modular. We didn’t want wall cupboards or fixed kitchen furniture. So we’ve created a ‘mobile’ kitchen, with every element on a stand that can be moved around. And it’s a kitchen with a carpet… We didn’t dare think about the carpet straight away when we first came here. But we ended up saying that we could only do that at home, that no client would agree to put a white carpet in a living room: it would be too messy… But we’re very happy with it. The utopia of walking about barefoot on the floor!

One thing we still don’t agree on is lampshades. Kim hates lampshades!

Well, as there isn’t much room here, we had to come to an agreement.

The opening of the Lilou hotel in Hyères in the spring. A hotel comprised of 37 rooms, a restaurant, and a bar managed by David Pirone (La Reine Jane, Popolo in Hyères) on which we have been working for nearly three years.

Three addresses with a timeless atmosphere: Brasserie Boffinger in Bastille for its decor, onion soup with munster cheese, and their delicious sauerkraut; Chez Janou, right next to our offices for the lunch menu or a pastis on the terrace in the late afternoon during the summer. And finally, Café l’Arsenal at the corner of Rue de Birague and Rue Saint-Antoine for Jean-Paul and his truffade. As you may have guessed, we enjoy good food!

The Tokyo Table in cream white lacquer for its timeless aspect; it’s a shade we love. We also appreciate its simple and elegant line that goes well with everything!