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 Why is it that your first experience at any hotel, no matter how fancy, makes you feel like you're waiting in line at a post office? You've probably never asked yourself this question, but fortunately for you, Shahé Kalaidjian has. Which is why there is no check-in desk at the new Hotel Sezz at 6 Avenue Frémiet in Paris. Instead, there's this marvellous person who meets you when you arrive, and says hello in a friendly, thoroughly un-stiff kind of way that you're not used to in a town that can be, let's face it, a little uptight. You sit down together in the hotel's elegant, low-key lobby. Would you like a drink-coffee, tea, something with a little more kick? Of course you would. Who wouldn't? And while you unwind, the two of you start chatting about what you prefer when you travel and what you are looking for during your stay in Paris. You find yourself thinking, I like this Sezz person, so helpful and yet so_unpushy. You find yourself wishing they would stick around to give you a hand during your stay-making sure things run smoothly, getting you theatre tickets, going shopping with you to show you places not on every tourist map. Wish granted. This is your personal assistant who will be just a phone call away for the length of your stay at the Sezz. |
 Not to make too much of this, but it gives a flavour of the Hotel Sezz approach. Shahé Kalaidjian owns the place, and it embodies his philosophy about what constitutes a luxury hotel in the 21st century. It's not about teak finishes, cashmere throws on the bed or hand-blown Murano glass flower vases. As it happens, the vases in the Sezz are hand-blown Murano glass. We'll get to that in a minute. But as far as Shahé Kalaidjian is concerned, fine materials are just the opening ante to sit at the table. «Luxury is no longer what it was in the 1980s and '90s», says Kalaidjian. «Today, the notion of luxury is space and service». Service, as in a personal assistant who, when you ask for a car to drive you down to Nice, says_sure, no problem. «The idea is simple» says Kalaidjian: «Always say yes before you say no». And space as in, say, 200 square feet. That's the size of the smallest of the Sezz's 27 rooms. The larger rooms are 400 square feet. Large enough for you? Shahé doesn't care a fig for the idées reçues of running a luxury hotel. If the old ways of doing things don't promote ease, comfort and unforced elegance, he's perfectly happy to scrap them and come up with something new that works better. There's no other Paris hotel to date that has no reception desk, for instance, which doesn't bother Kalaidjian one bit. And who said the bed had to backed-up smack against the wall in ever single hotel room? Certainly not Kalaidjian, who directed that most beds in the Hotel Sezz stand freely in the middle of the room, the easier to stroll around them. It works. On the other hand, no city understands better than Paris how to craft a sense of personal well-being from an accumulation of small pleasures, one exquisite detail at a time. That is its heritage, honed over generations. And in this, Shahé Kalaidjian knows how to honour Paris' classic sense of savoir vivre. |
 The lighting fixtures in the lobby, for instance, were specially created for the Sezz in the legendary glass workshops of Murano, outside Venice. Vanity tops in the bathrooms are crafted by Boffi, and the taps are signed Dorn Bracht. Driade made the chairs, and Artelano made the sofas and beds. You may not know these names, but they're the modern equivalents of the great unsung artisans who stocked the grand palais and hôtels particuliers of Paris in bygone eras. But really, the look of luxury is about a lot more than buying nice lamps and chairs. The trick is pulling everything together in a seamless whole. Here Kalaidjian had the brilliant idea of hiring the gifted designer Christophe Pillet. The Sezz doesn't shout about any of this. It doesn't shout at all. You won't pass it on any of Paris' well-worn thoroughfares, its entry crammed with ostentatious limousines. It's tucked away from the tourist bustle on a small street in classy Passy, the hushed, opulent neighbourhood where the Bir Hakeim bridge hits the Right Bank. This is the neighbourhood where Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider cuddled in Last Tango in Paris-their love nest is just around the corner, in fact. It's a good neighbourhood for that sort of thing. |
 In 1913, an architect named Albert Vèque lined the avenue Frémiet with the grand limestone buildings so characteristic of Paris-at once stolid and yet sinuous, undeniably bourgeois but lilting, too. It was here that Shahé Kalaidjian found the ideal spot for the seemingly paradoxical hotel he had had always wanted to create-rigorously informal, casually meticulous, call it what you like. Kalaidjian has just the background for someone who can harmonize these seemingly disparate elements, being a man of many parts. He grew up in an Armenian family in Beirut, that crossroads of world cultures. He glides across their frontiers, switching from French to Arabic to English as if he was born equally to all three, which in a sense he was. His education took him from Jordan to London, where he stayed on after he finished his formal studies in hotel and business administration. That's when his real schooling began, learning about service from the bottom up by working in pubs and restaurant-including a brief stint as a pizza chef. A series of jobs followed: Sommelier at Selfridge's, chef-de-rang at Maxim's in Paris. When Shahé sweats the details at the Hotel Sezz, it's because he's poured his own sweat into most of the hotel's jobs somewhere along the way. |
 The next phase in the apprenticeship of a master hotelier came when Shahé returned to Paris after a six-month stint in New York. If he now has the confidence to break the rules, it is only because he already knows the rulebook inside and out. In 1994, he opened the Holiday Inn at Marne-la-Vallée, where Euro Disney is located. This taught him everything he needed to know about the hotel he did not dream of building one day. In 1999, Shahé Kalaidjian opened Pavillon de Paris, the first canvas on which he could sketch his ideas of what a hotel ought to look and feel like. Kalaidjian has a passion for architecture and modern design. His heroes include Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles et Ray Eames, Mies Van Der Rohe, Philippe Starck. The spaces he creates and the collaborators he chooses reflect many of the aesthetic principles of these masters. Pavillon is a small jewel box in a quiet enclave near Place de Clichy, a neighbourhood throbbing with rude life. Designed by the interior architect Joseph Karam, its 30 rooms are at once luxurious and uncluttered. There's an oriental quality to the sparseness of the interiors, which often serve as an ad hoc gallery for Charlotte Kalaidjian, Shahé's wife. Charlotte had the idea of merging her art curating activities with her husband's hotels, and the result is a kind of floating gallery and museum within the hotel-the principal beneficiaries being Pavillon's guests. That too doesn't come from the standard hotel operating manual, but it works. |
 All Shahé Kalaidjian´s experience, from Beirut to Disneyland and on through Pavillon de Paris, lead up to Sezz. Here is where Shahé finds the fullest
expression of those principles that describe his eclectic approach to the hotel business: comfort above all, easy elegance and service that adapts itself to the needs of the guest, rather than the other way around. But please don't call Sezz a home away from home. Shahé cringes when you use the term, which denotes a certain hang-around-in-your-sweatpants sloppiness. Informal yes, but muscularly informal, if there is such a thing. There are strong bones underneath the loose garments of this hotel. Much of the credit for realizing Kalaidjian's bold ideas must go to the designer Christophe Pillet. Pillet received his Masters in design from the prestigious Domus School in Milan, and cut his teeth working with powerhouse designers like Martine Bedin and
Philippe Starck. On his own since the mid-90s, his work has cut across all the traditional categories of design from architecture to furniture and product design, interiors and set design. His furniture designs have been sold through Domeau & Pérès, he has envisioned interiors for the likes of Renault and Bally, and he has done product work for clients like L'Oreal and Whirlpool. Not bad. That breadth of experience made him the perfect partner to realize Shahé's vision, of which design is a key element. It all fits together, the place, the style and the refusal to fall back on the old formulas of hotel management. «The idea is to surprise people-to supply the 'wow factor' that elevates the hotel experience to another level», says Kalaidjian. «I want this hotel to feel as if you're going to a friend's house where you're pleasantly surprised by the level of decor and the comfort. You never knew your friend's taste was quite this good». Maybe your friend's taste isn't that good, but luckily for you, Shahé Kalaidjian's is. |
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