The standard villa and glass eating room at Villa Rene Lalique
For 100 years, Lalique has been admired for its beautiful jewellery, perfumes and collections of crystal and glass—the cactus tables, the Bacchantes vases, the colourful cabochon rings—which continues to be produced by a group of extremely expert artisans in its authentic glassworks in Alsace, France. What’s much less recognized is that Maison Lalique can also be expert at a selected sort of jewel field hospitality.
That’s most on show in its flagship resort, Villa René Lalique, which was constructed by the unique artist and founder in 1920 as a typically household dwelling close to his manufacturing facility. (It will also be stated to be celebrating its centenary, if you happen to determine that the pandemic years didn’t actually matter.) After a lavish renovation, it opened as a six-suite resort, and was rapidly welcomed into Relais & Château and awarded one after which two Michelin stars.
There is no such thing as a forgetting that you simply’re within the dwelling of Lalique. The design was carried out with absolute dedication—there’s stylized glass and crystal in every single place: the cactus tables within the lounge, the closet handles and drawer pulls within the bedrooms, the spirits decanters within the bar, the beautiful chandelier within the eating rooms. Within the fingers of a much less expert designer, it might have been cheesy, too excessive.
A photograph of René Lalique within the lounge
However designers Woman Tina Inexperienced and Pietro Mingarelli nailed it. Every of the suites is completely different, each in format and in design, impressed by considered one of Lalique’s signature items. The Rose Suite has a pastel colour palette and numerous incarnations of the flower. The Dragon Suite is outfitted in midnight blue and has a big balcony with a view over the park, and the Hirondelles Suite (French for “swallows”) is clad in a ruby purple that matches the enduring birds and bunches of grapes on the ornamental panels within the bathtub.
There’s sufficient Lalique that you simply virtually don’t want to go to the close by Lalique Museum. However you do. The museum shows items from the artist’s whole profession, from the nature-inspired Artwork Nouveau jewellery to latest collaborations with up to date artists like Arik Levy and Damien Hirst.
It’s putting to note how at-home glassware from the Twenties and ’30s can be at a Twenty first-century ceremonial dinner. It’s additionally value contemplating how René Lalique at all times dedicated to creating fairly issues accessible to as many individuals as potential, not solely aristocrats. That’s why he used glass as a major medium, and why he appreciated to say, “Higher to hunt magnificence than flaunt luxurious.”
The eating room
That stated, the resort isn’t shy about being luxurious. The lounge is anchored by an Artwork Deco bar with signature exotic-leather barstools and a show of carafes that Lalique has developed in partnerships with Hardy cognac, the Macallan whiskey, Beluga vodka and Patrón tequila.
The wine cellar, below the path of award-winning sommelier Romain Iltis, is a hovering house designed by Mario Botta with greater than 12,000 bottles on show in artfully lit cupboards. Damien Hirst’s crystal butterflies line the hall, and the cellar itself is seemed over by a large-than-life bust of René Lalique, with sugar flowers behind, made by pastry chef Nicolas Multon in collaboration with Josiane Ruez, a lost-wax mannequin maker and designer on the Lalique manufacturing facility.
Botta additionally designed the eating room, the place Austrian chef Paul Stradner presents his creative, colourful tasting menus. Like virtually any two-star chef nowadays, he attracts closely on seasonal greens from the kitchen backyard—the colourful freshness of his carrot dish is spectacular—in entrance of the resort and really native substances from close by producers.
A dish of leeks and cheese within the restaurant
Within the spirit of doing issues with absolute dedication, the nine-course signature menu, named for René Lalique, consists of such dishes as a “good egg” with nut-brown butter, caviar and salmon trout with dashi mousse, and a tempered carabinero prawn with cream, fir buds and white turnip. The equally lavish, vegetable-forward Terroir Menu, could be absolutely vegetarian, will get simply as a lot care—he says he significantly enjoys creating the dish of chickpeas with lemon, yogurt and curry.
Simply as Stradner is aware of that they sturdy taste of a vegetable plucked straight from their earth could be their very own luxurious, the house owners perceive that typically nature could be the best luxurious of all. They emphasize the resort’s forest environment and its location close to the Northern Vosges Regional Nature Park, with its mountaineering and biking trails.
They usually just lately launched forest sophrology, a type of souped-up model of forest bathing, which additionally consists of workout routines like strolling barefoot and blindfolded by the bushes, aware tasting and outside meditation. It’s a wonderful complement to the precision that emerges from the manufacturing facility and decorates the resort.
