5 Parisian couture hotels for a tailor-made Fashion Week

Who better to design the Crillon’s best suites than Karl Lagerfeld? Having overseen renovation of the Palace, this connoisseur of the 18th century looked after the series of suites on the hotel’s second floor. Harking back to the career of Arabescato Fantastico, he used rare, grey-veined marble in the bathrooms and embossing rolls from the archives of a royal factory. Using expertise with a dash of audacity, Lagerfeld – a veritable icon of timeless chic – has delivered an elegant reinterpretation of the decorative arts of the Enlightenment. Hôtel de Crillon

An elusive French fashion house has led the creative metamorphosis of a 19th-century mansion, resulting in a very special hotel: La Maison Champs-Élysées. Here, theatrical Haussmanian décor has been unshackled from its landmarks to serve as a backdrop to a reinterpretation of surrealism. The decorative heads on the tiles are scattered as if by a poetic breath, the walls of the Cigare Bar are adorned with charred wood, and in the white living room – the Maison’s fetish colour – lamps illuminate silhouettes of former executives. La maison Champs Elysées

Decorating a seven-storey hotel? For Chantal Thomass, the theme of the Vice Versa was immediately obvious: the seven deadly sins. The famous designer, who initiated the first lingerie runway shows, is showing no signs of slowing down… from the ground-floor ‘Gourmandise’ (Greed) dressed in sweet tones, to the ‘Luxure’ (Lust) whose lamps, headboards and switches are dressed in black lace, to ‘Envie’ (Envy) where luxury items play the trompe l’oeil, Chantal Thomass has thought of every detail to transform ‘Vice’ – if not into virtue, at least to please all the senses! The Vice Versa hotel

Six floors and only five continents? Never mind, Christian Lacroix invented a sixth – the Poles – to decorate the Hotel du Continent. This sums up the spirit of the Hotel du Continent, which invites guests into a chimeric world tour through 25 rooms and six stopovers. With seats covered in velvet zebra print for Africa, curtains printed with giant foliage for an imagined Oceania, and the sweet 18th-century nostalgia of an old continent, the most theatrical of the great French designers has designed a Baroque universe inspired by the fables and fantasies of the long exploratory voyages of the past. Hotel du Continent

Whether designing clothes and jewellery or decorating restaurants and hotels, Stella Cadente has never abandoned her fascination with fantastic tales – as evidenced by the strange setting of the Hotel Original. Inspired by Alice in Wonderland, the Snow Queen or Peau d’Ane, the stylist has created imaginary forests and animals, games of shadows, lights and reflections, and playing cards in all 38 rooms – for an atmosphere full of poetic mystery. Hotel Original