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Tapping stories from the past to envision a future
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Who are they?
Charlotte de Tonnac and Hugo Sauzay are interior designers and the founders of the agency Festen. They live and work together in Paris. The agency creates private (houses, apartments) and public (hotels, restaurants, stores) projects as well as scenographies and stagings.
Tell us some of your works, and name the one you are most proud of?
We are currently working on two beautiful townhouse projects in London and New York, as well as several stores in the two cities, and several hotel projects around the world including France, Spain, Mexico and Italy.
The imminent opening of the Splendido Mare, a Belmond hotel, in Portofino, Italy, represents a great satisfaction for us. Working on this iconic project in the mystic environment that is the village of Portofino has been a great challenge for us. This hotel is a tribute to the Italian art of living and to Liguria (northwestern Italy), and working with local craftsmen has been a real enrichment.
Describe your design style?
We like to work on the transformation of classical spaces — delving into a storied past to conceptualize its future. Our designs emphasize a quintessential union of tradition and modernity. For Splendido Mare, for example, we cherished its humble beginning as a guest house for fisherman and the cinematic setting of Portofino. The redesign evokes a stylish home where contemporary and vintage pieces coexist to provide a timeless feel. We want guests to feel comfortable, at ease but also feel the historical spirit, and to feel the coherence we try to create between the design of the hotel and its surroundings. Creating projects that are consistent with their local culture and environment is always important to us.
What does your home mean to you?
Our apartment in Paris is really a bubble in which we gather ourselves. It is in our image, sober but also ecletic, we are surrounded by furniture, objects and works of art all carefully chosen and accumulated over time. Some of them remind us of travels and memories. It is also a place where we continue to create and cultivate ourselves (a sort of extension of our offices).
What do you collect?
We do not collect anything in particular, but we spend a lot of time for our work and pleasure in flea markets, auction houses and antique shops! We have a real pleasure to discover rare pieces of furniture or a particular vase, as long as the object gives us emotions and interacts in a poetic way with the space in which it is meant to be placed.
What will be the next big design trend?
We notice on the stylistic level a return to the 1920s and 1930s, and to the rigor of the lines of the time (think Josef Frank or Mies Van der Rohe!) ... Also the art and craft movement, with a strong emphasis on the work of craftsmen and natural materials such as wood or straw are safe values.
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