A light touch doesn’t necessarily signify reticence, or indecision. Like a hostess who knows a simple roast chicken doesn’t demand a stage and so serves her bird on old ironstone in the kitchen rather than on Limoges in the dining room, some individuals just know to make a room sing with a minimum of orchestration.
The Paris apartment of Alice Gras and Anaïs Seguin, founders of the media company MOYO Paris and the creative studio Delajoie Editions, is a classic Haussmannian affair, a constellation of generously proportioned rooms detailed with handsome herringbone floors and decorative moldings. Dating from the 19th century, it has likely seen all sorts of design schemes over the years, from the clutter of bibelot-topped tables and antimacassar-draped bergères to the glass-and-metal motifs of the Bauhaus to Danish modern, and more.
The first time Gras and Seguin viewed the apartment, the space, with its abundant natural light and a sea-green kitchen, put them in mind of Claude Monet’s garden home at Giverny, which they had recently visited. Inspired by the artist’s bucolic residence, as well as by the palette of American artist Joan Mitchell and the compositions of Josef and Anni Albers, the couple embraced the architectural essence of the apartment while imbuing it with a highly personal liveliness.
“We like vintage spaces because, in a way, they share with us their energy, their history, which guides us in choosing the direction to take,” explains Gras, whose career includes five years as an art director at the boutique hospitality firm G.L.A. Hotels. “Achieving harmony – preserving the essence of a vintage space while infusing it with modernity – is an artful endeavor.” Or in the case of this couple, artless.
While certain pieces really pop, such as a rug they designed that comprises a pale center bordered by circular cut discs of blue, overall, this home expresses a laid-back nonchalance. There’s art in the central hallway, but rather than the ubiquitous gallery wall, just a few pieces are hung there. A humble Ikea sofa upholstered in green velvet with a contrasting fringe is an almost bohemian touch. Even the painted zig-zag that runs around the living room – along with two serpentine squiggles that frame an arched niche – read as something a child might have had fun doing, rather than a designer’s flourish.
Gras and Seguin both grew up in the suburbs, and as for countless people everywhere, city life beckoned. “Paris has always held a sort of fascination for us, like a promised land of all possibilities,” muses Seguin, who took to dance and art at an early age and counts weekly visits to the library as a formative childhood experience. “The uniformity of the suburbs weighed on us when we were younger, for different reasons, of course, and we needed to extricate ourselves from that.” Having alighted in an apartment erected at the advent of the Belle Époque, a space that – as Seguin states, “embodies a form of achievement” – the two have realized those youthful ambitions. “Choosing and giving yourself the means to live in a beautiful place,” adds Gras, “also means claiming the fact that you deserve it, that it is possible to live your dreams.”
Photography by Ramona Elena Balaban.
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