Dorothée Boissier French elegance
Luxury hotels, Michelin-starred restaurants, private residences: each project captures the spirit of a place while expressing the duo’s unmistakable vision of contemporary French design — restrained yet sensual, architectural yet deeply lived-in. From their Paris studio of forty collaborators, Gilles & Boissier create interiors where every detail matters: proportions, textures, circulation, light. Spaces designed not simply to impress, but to be inhabited emotionally. On Avenue Montaigne, their Apartment-Showroom — reinvented season after season as though it were their own private residence — currently presents “Réfractions,” a collection of silver-toned metal and glass objects where mirrors, reflections and light interact with almost cinematic precision.
What do clients respond to most in your work?
D.B. — I think they respond to a very personal point of view — something sincere that isn’t dictated by trends. Whether we’re designing a hotel, a private residence or a boutique, the project has to carry a strong identity and a shared vision. For nearly twenty years, we’ve followed the same philosophy: creating places that endure, places that feel rooted in their environment and connected to the history around them.
How would you describe your aesthetic?
D.B. — Our work is deeply rooted in the principles of classical architecture. Classical elements carry memory and permanence. They anchor both the person and the project within a larger story. Once that structure exists, you can create something unexpected inside it — something contemporary, emotional, even surprising.
How does your creative dialogue work?
D.B. — Everything begins with the plans. We need to understand the space physically before anything else. Then we spend a great deal of time talking, imagining ourselves inside the project, drawing from shared references — films, paintings, colors, atmospheres.
We think a lot about movement and emotion. How someone enters a room, where they sit, how the light falls at a certain hour of the day. In many ways, it’s almost theatrical. We imagine how people will live within the space long before the project exists physically.
Then comes the visual development phase. Patrick oversees the artistic direction of the projects.
At the Mandarin Oriental Marrakech, Gilles&Boissier reinterprets the spirit of the riad through a contemporary Beldi aesthetic.
Your work abroad has become particularly influential.
D.B. — What we love about interiors is their ability to absorb culture. Every project becomes an opportunity to engage with different histories, craftsmanship traditions and local artisans.
For the Mandarin Oriental in Marrakech, for example, we worked from a rustic Moroccan architectural language. We studied traditional materials and historical construction techniques before reinterpretating them through our own lens. We always prefer beginning with an existing identity rather than imposing one artificially.
Your Moncler boutiques around the world reflect that philosophy particularly well.
D.B. — It’s a house we’ve worked with for nearly twenty years alongside Remo Ruffini, and each boutique evolves according to its city. In Vienna or New York, you’ll find dark woods combined with stainless steel. In Paris, brushed oak paneling. On New Bond Street in London, there’s a more eccentric spirit layered over classical references.
This September, we’re unveiling a major flagship on Fifth Avenue in New York that will express yet another dimension of the brand.
What projects are currently occupying you?
D.B. — We’re currently working on around thirty projects at various stages. One of the most important is La Réserve in Florence, opening this November inside a historic palazzo. Rather than transforming the building into a conventional luxury hotel with as many rooms as possible, we chose — together with the owners — to preserve the original volumes and architectural traces of the property in order to create a handful of grand apartments.
On Champts-Élysées, Moncler has opened its largest flagship store in the world… designed by Gilles&Boissier.
At the same time, we’re working on a Mandarin Oriental in Rome, a Cheval Blanc in Sardinia, a second Dorchester property in Dubai inside a building designed by Zaha Hadid, as well as several private residences in Paris.
You also design furniture and objects.
D.B. — From the beginning, we wanted furniture to be fully integrated into our creative universe, so we design every object ourselves. What’s special is that we can present them inside our Apartment-Showroom on Avenue Montaigne, staged like a true Parisian apartment with furniture, objects and artworks that evolve constantly.
We recently launched the same concept in New York inside a 300-square-meter apartment. Our pieces truly come alive in those environments. They need context, atmosphere and daily life around them in order to be fully understood.
Lobby of the Four Seasons Mallorca, Cape Formentor, Spain.
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