THE RELAIS DE SUÈDE
The Relais de Suède by Slavik
When Slavik is entrusted with designing the Relais de Suède by the Swedish Chamber of Commerce, which is due to open in Paris in early 1965, he cannot ignore what he discovered at Stockholm’s Operakällaren. And the curves, interlacings and arches deployed by Horta in Brussels.
To those who might reproach him for taking as models, in the mid-1960s, forms developed nearly eighty years earlier, Slavik retorts: “I like the ambiguous charm of that 1900. Our grandparents abandoned themselves, in their joy, to an aesthetic depravity that we no longer have the courage for.”
Vogue, June 1965: At the restaurant of the Maison de la Suède, gilded roses and 1910-style curving woodwork. This Belle Époque panelling was designed by Slavik “with a strictly physical pleasure. It is more enjoyable to make them than to have made them.” For their rounded outlines, the cabinetmakers call them “bones”. Stucco women form a circle of hips and busts beneath the dome.
New York Herald Tribune, Paris, January 21, 1965: Its atmosphere comes from childhood memories of bourgeois interiors. “I wanted to create a feeling of nostalgia, comfort and bourgeois happiness,” says Slavik. “I did not do it for the yé-yé crowd or for millionaires.”
Aux Écoutes, February 10, 1969 : One of the best foreign restaurants in Paris. The brilliant setting was created by Slavik… The Relais de Suède is now considered one of the must-stop places in elegant Paris.
Pierre Vedel, who was head chef at the Relais de Suède from 1966 to 1969 before leaving for the Imperial in Tokyo, told me: “The Relais de Suède was a very beautiful place, with a very long American-style bar, very chic, a crushed raspberry carpet, gilded wood panelling with banquettes and red leather upholstered armchairs, a large lounge, all beneath a large Tiffany-style glass roof. A buffet with various smoked salmon and other items, a large rotisserie… Of course, we served all of Paris’s media and political elite.”
The Relais de Suède was destroyed in May 1975 during an attack by the German “Baader gang” against the Swedish Chamber of Commerce.
