Hazarian with her Shih Tzus, Odie and Kiki. Photo: Michael Mundy
When it comes to international résumés, Aline Hazarian’s is as wide-ranging as you’ll find. The furniture designer was born and raised in Lebanon, where she studied interior design and art history before working in finance for her family’s business there. Today, the globe-trotting polyglot fluidly shifts between multiple residences—including in Dubai; Saint-Tropez, France; and Gstaad, Switzerland—while making frequent trips to New York, where her striking bronze pieces, fabricated in a Lebanese foundry, are sold at the high-style furniture gallery Maison Gerard. But it is her apartment in Paris, a stone’s throw from the Arc de Triomphe, that may come closest to feeling like home. “I can’t really call anywhere home as I’m a little bit of everywhere,” Hazarian admits, “but Paris and its cultural life suit me.”
In 2013, Hazarian and her husband, who have twins in their late teens, bought a 5,000-square-foot, single-floor flat on Avenue Marceau, a gracious tree-lined street in the luxury district of the eighth arrondissement. They were enchanted with the entrance to their 1870s building, which retained its Haussmann-era elegance, and sought to re-create that same sense of classical grandeur in unremarkable rooms that hadn’t been lived in for a number of years.
Collaborating with architect Yéléna Colin, Hazarian enlisted the crème de la crème of Paris artisans to outfit the lavish four-bedroom residence. Inspired by the arched central gallery of the Orangerie at Château de Versailles, she transformed the ho-hum rectilinear entry into a soaring space with vaulted ceilings and checkerboard marble flooring. One living room was paneled in intricately carved boiserie that looks straight out of the 1800s, while a second living room, featuring a lighter palette but no less glamorous, was fashioned with opulent necklaces of gold-leaf moldings. Exquisite parquet de Versailles flooring lines the majority of the apartment.
Hazarian installed a spectacular 1920s Art Deco chandelier from Spain above the table and chairs she designed for the dining room, which also features antique marble consoles, custom velvet-clad benches, curtains in a Fadini-Borghi fabric, and parquet de Versailles flooring by Féau Boiseries. Photo: Michael Mundy
Views from the apartment take in the Arc de Triomphe. Photo: Michael Mundy
Hazarian’s home office, courtly and cozy, is sumptuously appointed in panels of Cordoba leather embossed with damask-style scrolling patterns painted in an antiqued gold finish. “I wanted everything to look as if it has existed for a long time,” she explains.
What makes these rooms work so well beyond their pitch-perfect ode to 19th-century Parisian charm is the magical interplay between blue-chip antiques, singular works of modern art that the couple has accumulated over the years, and Hazarian’s shapely bronze furnishings. It was the enthusiastic response of friends and visitors to her designs that prompted her to launch a six-piece collection at Maison Gerard in 2018.
In the second living room, ornamented with gilt paneling and moldings by Atelier Mériguet-Carrère, a Max Ernst painting flanked by 19th-century sconces overlooks a seating area where a sofa, chairs, and multiple tables by Hazarian are arrayed around long cocktail tables by Eric Schmitt, joined by a pair of Liaigre lamps. At the room’s center, a custom daybed is covered in a Fadini-Borghi fabric, while on the sides, artworks by Zao Wou-Ki (left) and Pablo Picasso are mounted above consoles by Hazarian. Photo: Michael Mundy
Hazarian’s spare, cinched-waist bronze sconces are just about the only decoration in the cloister-like entry. In a corner of the dark-paneled living room, she juxtaposed an 18th-century crystal chandelier with a painting by Alexander Calder and a black leather half-moon sofa of her own design. The effect is radically chic—like a bejeweled society swan with a motorcycle jacket draped over her shoulders.
“It’s quite a mix of furnishings, and yet it feels so coherent—nothing is incongruent”
Aline Hazarian
One end of the gilded living room displays abstract artworks by Max Ernst and Zao Wou-Ki. The other end features a classical marble mantelpiece identical to one in a salon at the Château de Versailles. Hazarian chose not to hang any art on the paneling above that fireplace until she found just the right counterpoint: a hexagonal Lucio Fontana slashed canvas in vivid red. Elsewhere in that room, she recently installed one of her gleaming gold-polished bronze consoles, inspired by stalactites and created in 2021, beneath a Pablo Picasso painting—a pairing that sparks a frisson. Even with the Picasso’s wow factor, she felt the space “needed something else to elevate it.”
An Alexander Calder painting, displayed between windows curtained in a Dedar fabric, adds a colorful note to the dark-paneled living room, where an 18th-century La Granja chandelier dazzles above the Hazarian-designed leather sofa, which curls around a marble-and- bronze table topped with Hermès coffee cups. Photo: Michael Mundy
The primary bedroom features a wall covering and curtain fabric by Dedar, bed linens by Frette, a mirror by Lalique, and a rug by JD Staron. Hazarian designed the lounge chair, lamp, side table, and hide-upholstered ottoman. Photo: Michael Mundy
The expansive dining room, meanwhile, can handle a party and often does when Hazarian is in town. A massive 1920s Spanish Deco chandelier shimmers above the cedar table with a smoked-oak top and a set of 24 Napoléon III–inspired bronze-and-wood chairs, all of her own design. A quartet of red velvet benches adds richness and warmth to the room.
“It’s quite a mix of furnishings, and yet it feels so coherent—nothing is incongruent,” Hazarian says of her Parisian home. “I wanted each room to be different but at the same time homogeneous.” When friends come over, the designer adds, “they find it so relaxing they don’t want to leave.”
A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2024 Winter Issue under the headline “Profusion of Grandeur.” Subscribe to the magazine.
Cover: In the first of two living rooms in Aline Hazarian’s Haussmann-era Paris residence, a Joan Miró painting is mounted between 19th-century sconces on paneling by Féau Boiseries. Hazarian designed the sofa and chairs, all upholstered in Dedar fabrics, as well as the stool, the cocktail table that hosts a sculpture by Costas Coulentianos, and the bookshelves, which are topped by antique bronze sculptures. The custom-made rug is by JD Staron.
Photo: Michael Mundy
