Here, you’re really at the crossroads of fur and old-school aristocracy. I was brought up properly, in Paris’s 7th arrondissement, attending the same school from nursery all the way through to final year. I come from a large family — I have three brothers — with a journalist mother and a father who was a school head. We had our family apartment and a country house in Vendée. What more can I say? Yes, we do embody a certain type of classic Parisian cliché.

The family home is magnificent. Clément’s mother is a former journalist with impeccable taste, who did many portraits of writers and was friends with Karl Lagerfeld… There’s toile de Jouy everywhere and the curtains are absolutely over the top.

I don’t have that kind of taste at all.

As for me, I come from a family of Ashkenazi Jewish furriers on my father’s side. He was the only one among seven siblings who didn’t want to work in the family business, Sprung Frères. In every Jewish family, there had to be a lawyer and a doctor — and he was the doctor (laughs). I’m an only child. I grew up in Paris and went to a bilingual school, attending the same school my whole life with lots of friends from all over the world — a circle I still keep.

I lived with an entrepreneurial mother, a fashion press officer, who had her offices in our apartment. We had a very large apartment near Parc Monceau — both her showroom, where she showcased all the brands she worked for, and her office, alongside our private living space. It was a bit like the atmosphere here: grand mouldings, high ceilings, but very few furnishings because the space was too big, too many rooms, and what she loved was the openness — being able to host, to mix her personal and professional life, and to have space for her clothing racks. At the time, she worked for all the major brands: Céline, Jourdan, among others. She embodied the very essence of an ’80s fashion press officer!

My father, on the other hand, is nostalgic and emotional. He keeps a few small objects, but he’s mostly contemplative.

Absolutely, for our cultural education: visiting museums, exploring châteaux, reading…

I think we’ve really built our taste together. We both took a big step away from our family backgrounds — him from a hyper-classical world, me from one quite disconnected from culture. Clément has a passion for the entire Renaissance. I live in a creative world — it’s become my profession — so I’ve learned along the way. But my first apartments as a young adult were very poorly decorated, honestly quite ugly. My taste has sharpened over twenty years. I didn’t arrive with a cultural or refined heritage, necessarily. But I think what I did learn from my parents, especially my mother, is how to inhabit a space. Even when there was little furniture, there was always life — it was very warm: always the right light, the right materials, creating a pleasant atmosphere.

Fur is, of course, a dying trade. Who still buys fur nowadays, at least new rather than vintage? Besides, they came from another era — the house was founded in the 1930s — they were artisans more than a fashion brand. They had managed to adapt and could have become a knitwear label. In the end, they were making cashmere, pelts, pieces that could still have sold and were beautiful, but it was too marginal for a company that had once been very large.

I was the first to see this apartment. I thought to myself: it just fell into our laps. It was a friend who moonlights as a real estate agent who called us.

It was an inheritance. An elderly lady lived in this apartment in a very unconventional way. We’re on the ground floor of an old townhouse, like many buildings in Nouvelle Athènes — a neighbourhood I only discovered when moving here, a sort of enclave in the 9th arrondissement. Anyway, this apartment was basically just a reception area. The old lady, who must have been quite an eccentric, lived in the corridor, where she’d hung a small curtain to hide a single-seater sofa. That’s where she slept. All the other rooms — and there were quite a few, since our bedroom became the dining room, plus the salon and the veranda — were purely reception rooms. The place was filled with sofas, armchairs, couches, everywhere!

A lot, yes. When we moved in and started the renovations, I was expecting Joseph. We absolutely needed to recreate a family apartment in a space that hadn’t been designed for that at all. We stripped everything back. We were determined to keep the structure intact — the doors, which are stunning, the mouldings, even if they aren’t original. We later learned that the apartment had burned in the 1980s, so the original parquet floors were gone. The ceiling had originally been painted. Apparently, this apartment once hosted some incredible literary salons. The previous owner had managed to restore the place as best she could.

Redistributing the rooms, without a doubt! Creating bedrooms was a challenge. Joseph’s room is in the former kitchen. That immediately raised the question of where the kitchen would go. We debated for a long time about placing it, as is often the case, in the salon as an open-plan, American-style kitchen. At the same time, we loved that room and its volume — we didn’t want to disrupt the harmony. Then came the idea of putting it in the corridor, by the entrance. It’s a little unusual to enter straight into the kitchen in such a very classic apartment. Our architect, who’s also a friend, reassured us: “It’s done — I’ve seen it in Italy; people often enter apartments straight through the kitchen!”

We didn’t have a choice. It was the best we could do. I came from a tiny apartment and had always dreamed of a dressing room. But this space is so beautiful partly because there’s a lot of “lost” space. So we tried to make use of those areas. The entrance became the kitchen, and behind those very tall cupboards in the corridor is the laundry room, with all the appliances. We optimised the space as much as possible.

Yes! I think she wanted it when the apartment burned down. She built this veranda, and she did it brilliantly — it’s beautiful. We only changed the floor, adding underfloor heating beneath the antique tiles we found, so we can still spend plenty of time there.

I don’t feel like we have a very defined style — it’s more an accumulation of objects we like. We can mix very contemporary pieces with my family heirlooms, my two armchairs from the 1920s, or artworks by friends. There are plenty of them on the walls.

I remember we agreed that we didn’t want to over-modernise and that we wanted to respect the history of the place, leaning toward something a little more old-fashioned. Without falling into an overly classic cliché, we added small contemporary touches to shake things up a bit. But you don’t decorate an apartment like this with Scandinavian furniture.

This photograph of the Tuileries was taken by my brother, the artist and photographer Ambroise Tézenas. It’s a daytime shot, but if you look closely, you can see shadows. The exposure is so long that moving people disappear from the image, leaving only a faint, ghostly trace. I really love that atmosphere. We also have other photos by my brother in the entrance and in the veranda…

We’re lucky to be surrounded by talented artists! Here, I have two etchings by an old friend, Étienne de Fleurieu; they create these impressions of fingers intertwined with leaf shapes, which I find beautiful. I also have this original piece, probably one of the first works by Hiromi — the ceramics and design studio founded by my former partner Johanna de Clisson. This piece is an abstract sculpture.

The four little dogs are the work of a friend, Elvire Bonduelle, an artist who now lives in Marseille.

You can’t see it here, but we have a cinema screen hidden at the top of the bookshelf. We couldn’t put a mirror above the fireplace, and for a long time it stayed empty — I didn’t know what to put there. In the end, we added this piece of Pierre Frey wallpaper, which we love.

The armchairs are part of my family inheritance, though I’m not exactly sure of their origin, except that they’re Art Deco. My mother gave them to me, and I had them reupholstered about twenty years ago.

They’re a bit battered, but we love them. The same goes for our headboard and bedside tables, which we found at the auction of the Hôtel Lutetia’s furniture in Paris!

I lead a double life! By chance, with some friends, we bought a cidery in the Cotentin called Maison Hérout. It was a small local gem from the 1950s, on the verge of closing. One of the first cidories to go organic back in the 1970s — an incredible cider. We completely redesigned and modernised it. They produce cider, Calvados, pommeau, and cider vinegar. Now our products are sold in high-end independent wine shops and small bistro-style restaurants, as more sommeliers are championing cider as a refreshing alternative. It even exports quite well to Korea, Japan, and the United States — very French cider at its best.

Simone, my agency, created the identity for the new Bus Palladium, which opens at the end of the year. This legendary venue, just near my home, has been completely redesigned by the brilliant Studio KO, with a five-star hotel added.

I’ve just opened a large coffee shop for my brand Araku near the Marché d’Aligre, where I was able to install my own roasting operation and invite the gluten-free baker-pastry chef Chambelland.

The Socialite Family has revolutionised the world of interior design by embedding it in people’s real lives, giving objects a soul.

My first TSF crush was the cane bench. An old icon now, but timeless!