Charme d'Orient

Hammam rituals, prepared before your eyes.

Localisation

Paris XIᵉ

YEAR

2019

SURFACE

250 m²

MISSION

Store concept and delivery

Photography

Edoardo de Ruggiero

APPROACH

NARRATE

Across the Maghreb and the Levant, beauty has long been a domestic affair. Before the public hammam, women gathered in one another’s laundry rooms: water was boiled, the room became a steam room, and recipes passed from hand to hand. The preparations were often edible, honey, sugar, black seed, as much from the kitchen as from tradition.

The spa occupies a ground floor and its vaulted stone cellars, ordinary Parisian basements laid bare. The shop is upstairs, the rituals below.

In most spas, preparations are hidden away in a laboratory. Here, they are made in the shop itself, at a kitchen island, in front of the guests. The ingredients sit in basins set into the counter, as in an Italian gelateria, under hanging utensil racks.

Everything refers to the rituals of the bath. Foutas hang from the ceiling, hammam buckets line the windows, and a screen is built entirely from Aleppo soap. Furniture inspired by 1950s and 60s Formica grocery shelving gives the place the feel of a neighbourhood shop rather than a perfumery.

Below, the vaults do the rest. First comes a relaxation lounge around a fountain. In the treatment rooms, the old air vents opening at street level are lit from behind, recreating the filtered light of the high windows in Turkish baths. The scrub room, with two heated granite slabs and a cold-water basin, opens directly onto the steam room.

Humble traditions, taken seriously.