Hotel of the Week: Haussmann Heritage Meets Maximalist Chic at L’Aventure in Paris
Designers Martin Brudnizki and Vincent Darré conceive a combination members’ club, Art Deco restaurant, and 15-room boutique hotel on the Champs-Élysées
Just as New Yorkers refuse to step foot in tourist-heavy Times Square, Parisians avoid the Champs-Élysées, deemed “the most beautiful avenue in the world”—unless it’s to catch Tour de France cyclists on their final sprint. With plans to transform the thoroughfare into a pedestrian-friendly green space, the boulevard is slowly commencing its much-needed facelift with the help of enticing additions like the gilded, seven-story RH Paris flagship gallery and Louis Vuitton’s first hotel, slated to debut this spring.
In a neighborhood dominated by some of the largest names in luxury, from Four Seasons Hotel George V, Paris to Bulgari, and The Peninsula Paris, the trickle of new, design-driven boutique hotels is adding to the boulevard’s budding revival. The latest is a return to the glamour of 1980s Parisian nightlife, when muses and models (plus royals like Princess Caroline of Monaco) rubbed elbows at L’Aventure on Avenue Victor Hugo, a block behind the Arc de Triomphe.
Gilbert and Thierry Costes’s Beaumarly group, which includes iconic addresses like Café Marly under the Louvre’s stone arcades, acquired the 19th-century Haussmannian building during the pandemic. (Gilbert and his brother, Jean-Louis, were behind namesake Hotel Costes, a fixture on the Parisian fashion circuit for more than 30 years.) Paying tribute to L’Aventure in its hedonist heyday, they enlisted Martin Brudnizki, a Galerie Creative Mind, who infused a modernized take on Art Deco. The maximalist designer behind the reimagining of clubs like London’s legendary Annabel’s drew inspiration from Victor Hugo’s collection of poems The Legend of the Ages, playing on themes like metamorphosis and rebirth.
The subterranean, Silencio-style members’ club and ground-floor restaurant—both of which debuted last year—are draped in rich textures like beautifully embroidered velvets and shimmering, mythical mosaics in rich shades of amber, gold, and royal blue. One of Hotel Costes’s defining features is its signature lounge music, a style of smooth house that became the Parisian equivalent to Ibiza-born Balearic beats. Music has been at the heart of L’Aventure since the start (the club’s original founder was French singer Dani), and the deep house artists who’ve more recently taken the stage here (Guy Gerber, Seth Troxler) are some of the most sought-after on the scene.
L’Aventure’s finishing touch to its trifecta—a 15-room boutique hotel spread across the upper five floors—is ever-so-slightly more subdued, with artistic director Vincent Darré reimagining the city’s grand hôtels particuliers (private mansions) with a theatrical twist through astral carpets and sunburst light fixtures. Darré’s ink drawings adorn the walls, complementing pieces by artists like Algerian-French Adel Abdessemed, plucked from the Costes family’s personal collection.
The top two floors can convert into Parisian-style penthouses, and while most of the generously-sized spaces at L’Aventure show off glimpses of its neighbor, the Arc de Triomphe, the best view in the house is from the scene-stealing Arc de Triomphe Suite, whose balcony overlooks the famous French landmark.