Who's Going
Budget Travelers, Design Snobs, Under-40 Professionals
Reason to Stay
Restaurant, Lobby Lounge, Budget Boutique
Hotel Type
Budget Boutique
St. Blaise is one of Paris's hottest up-and-coming neighborhoods. It's home to Pere Lachaise and its eternal residents that include Molière, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf and Jim Morrison. While their move to the area came once in a permanent horizontal position, their home within Paris's largest and most famous cemetery have made the area a refuge for resident artists and emerging media-types. Coming at a time when most Paris hotels cost in excess of 300-Euro per night, Mama Shelter is a budget boutique brand started by the owners of Club Med and French philosopher Cyril Aouizerate. The partners contracted interior designer Philippe Starck to create a new cutting-edge look that not only defines Mama Shelter but a new chapter in "Starck" design.
The hotel's façade is new and fresh, contradicting the cobblestone streets and soot-covered storefronts of the surrounding neighborhood. Free of all-white rooms with impractical seating, the first floor "Chic-Chic" lounge is vamp and seductive with dim lighting revealing slate-colored stone floors and ceiling floated with endless scribbles and philosophic ramblings. An adjacent brasserie is free of unnecessary Japanese fusion food and instead offers exactly what you want in Paris, namely a good Steak Frites and menagerie of seafood dishes in a whimsical dining room and outdoor terrace of tulip chairs and resin sofas. Prices that start at 79-Euros and a surprisingly un-boutique design more than makes up for the removed residential location once reserved for the dead.
The Room
An unconventional check-in of relaxed reservationists at office-style desks leads to a stainless-steel elevator that carries you away to industrial hallways with smooth-cement walls and a provocatively printed black carpet. Heavy black doors open to crisp design spaces with free of wall art with the exception of the occasional suspended mirror or within larger upper-floor suites. More than the common-areas and lobby, Starck’s starkness comes across loud and clear in the hotel’s 172 rooms. Platform-style beds are draped in satiny-cotton linens with synthetic pillows and two Marvel-inspired reading lights nailed to the wall in lieu of side tables. All rooms come complete with free WiFi and Apple iMac that double as the television. Bathrooms make you beg for a razor and a wrist, with hospital-white tiles and bowl sink opposite a lackluster shower with ceiling-mounted rain shower and Starck water wand. Luckily there are Kiehl’s toiletries, although not always replenished daily, to keep us from doing the unthinkable. If we painted the rooms white and turned up the lighting, the space wouldn’t look unlike St. Martin’s Lane, Delano, Hudson or Royalton proving that the old myth about designers and new tricks even pertains to the boutique hotel business.
Preferred Room
Mama Terrace
Special Features
Mini-Kitchens, Designer Hotel, Residential Location
Amenities
Restaurant, Lounge, Bar, City Views
