PROFILES

“We aim to translate words into images from which will emerge a bar, a restaurant, a showroom or whatever.”

Do you know France Bittel? No? You should! And you do if you’re an habitué of the Côte d’Azur’s hippest hangouts, e.g. Nine, Ka, Edusa, The View, SuperLobster, Le Madona, for behind those names lies one of the trendiest interior design practices of the moment: Bleu Gris. Since France started the practice in 2015 with associate Olivier Chanard, it has made its style felt. A style the lady herself describes as... “no style”! For France doesn’t do duplication, she does creation every time, meaning the concrete materialisation of concepts and ideas born of an inspiration triggered by place, shape and volume, plus of course the customer’s words and vision. “We aim to translate words into images from which will emerge a bar, a restaurant, a showroom or whatever.” It’s a genuine passion for this woman who was “sort of” born into it: “My parents worked in masonry, and when you spend your life on building sites they feel like home to you.” She could have gone into interior decoration but “looking at what interiors shops were doing, I found it all very superficial. I needed to go deeper, to the fundamentals.” Hence interior design, which isn’t about expression as the be all and end all but about suggesting a life experience founded on feeling. An experience whose success depends on it triggering an immediate appreciation and feeling of wellbeing. That last factor is important to France, for if she hadn’t become an interior designer she would have gone into a wellbeing profession, “to do on an individual and personal level what I’m presently doing collectively”.

Par Alexandre Benoist / Photo Jean-Michel Sordello