La Maison Champs Élysées, Paris

Rooms designed by Maison Martin Margiela, a location in the heart of Paris’s Golden Triangle, and a touch of traditional French elegance; it’s hard not to become enamoured with La Maison Champs Élysées.

The hotel, which sits between Avenue Montaigne and the Grand Palais, blends elegant, chic style with imaginative – almost theatrical – design. Its rooms are simple, clean and contemporary, offering a relaxing oasis in the city, but the real pull is its Couture Collection; the 17 rooms and suites designed by Maison Martin Margiela.

Taking its distinctive design aesthetic and applying it to interiors, the fashion house uses visual trickery and avant-garde style to create luxury rooms that aren’t quite what they seem. Take the ‘Lost Mouldings Suite’, for example, with almost-clinical white rooms where its wall mouldings start and finish at random; the ‘Gilded Lounge Suite’, where the ornamental richness of the Napoleon III style is reproduced in trompe-l’œil fashion on the walls; or the ‘Curiosity Case Suite’, where walls and parquet floors are black and moody, and a curiosities case full of contemporary objects dominates one of the walls.

The various bars and restaurants offer this same innovative, almost surreal, take on décor – think oversized mouldings and false doors – while serving up equally as good-looking (and tasting) food. Don’t miss the terrace and relaxing garden outside when the weather warms up.

For more information, visit the La Maison Champs Élysées website.