Hôtel LULU

The name LULU is an imagined nickname for the nearby Jardin du Luxembourg, but it also neatly captures the hotel’s personality: Parisian, informal and just a little eccentric. Set on Boulevard du Montparnasse, close to the gardens and between Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Latin Quarter, the 27-room hotel occupies a part of Paris where cafés, bookshops, galleries and artists’ studios have shaped intellectual life for generations. Hemingway, Man Ray, Lee Miller, Modigliani, Cocteau, Picasso, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir are all part of the wider neighbourhood mythology. LULU doesn’t attempt to recreate their Paris. Instead, designer Vanessa Scoffier uses that history as permission to mix periods freely.

Brutalism, Softened

Scoffier is best known for Hôtel Henriette, but LULU deliberately moves away from its more bohemian, decorative character. Here the architecture becomes stronger and more masculine: poured concrete, brushed stainless steel, chrome and clean lines establish a Brutalist and modernist framework. Then she softens it. Off-white walls meet taupe, khaki, caramel and brown; cold metal sits against dark timber, velvet and thick carpeting. The result is what might best be described as soft Brutalism — structured and architectural, but never austere.

The Seventies Are Back

Vintage furniture prevents the architecture from becoming too polished. A 1970s Corbi sofa by Klaus Uredat joins pieces and references spanning different decades, while lighting by names including Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand sits alongside contemporary work and neon. Elsewhere, old château doors, terracotta vessels, aged mirrors, antique books and found chairs bring imperfection and history. And then there is the leopard-print carpet running through the staircase and corridors, paired with lacquered ochre walls and brown doors — a knowingly provocative nod to the Art Deco brasseries and more decadent side of Montparnasse. It shouldn’t necessarily work with Brutalism. Which is precisely why it does.

A Little Riviera Upstairs

The guestrooms retreat from the architectural tension downstairs. Creamy walls, heavy curtains, substantial bedspreads, natural materials and deep carpeting create quieter, cocoon-like spaces above the energy of Boulevard du Montparnasse. Scoffier, who comes from the Côte d’Azur, introduces a subtle Riviera sensibility, particularly in the bathrooms. Recycled glass mosaics cover walls and floors in powder pink, pale blue and watery green, recalling old Mediterranean swimming pools and adding an unexpectedly playful contrast to the earthy bedrooms. The old Hôtel de Nice sign discovered in the attic provides an accidental but rather perfect connection to that southern mood.

From Coffee to Piano

At ground level, LULU is designed to change character throughout the day. Beneath a large glass roof, the winter garden brings plants and daylight into the harder concrete-and-steel architecture, subtly echoing the greenery of the Jardin du Luxembourg nearby. Breakfast gives way to a coffee shop open to the neighbourhood, before the space shifts again in the evening as cocktails and the piano take over. Tables fashioned from recycled scaffolding continue the hotel’s interest in giving existing materials and objects another life. Rather than creating separate venues for every function, LULU lets one social space evolve from morning to night — closer to the natural rhythm of a Parisian café than a conventional hotel lobby.

A New Layer of Montparnasse

LULU could easily have become another exercise in Parisian nostalgia. Instead, Scoffier takes the Left Bank’s habit of mixing artists, intellectuals, outsiders and eras as her starting point. Concrete meets leopard carpet. Modernist lighting meets château doors. Seventies furniture meets family books. Mediterranean mosaics appear a few streets from the Jardin du Luxembourg. None of it belongs to precisely the same period, yet together it feels curiously coherent. That may be LULU’s most Parisian quality: it understands that history becomes much more interesting when you don’t try to reproduce it.