Steve Cordony’s design guide to Paris
When interiors guru Steve Cordony travelled to Paris for the World Cup with Range Rover, he left no design stone unturned. He unpacks the influences that have followed him home.
We were both lucky enough to be in France during the Rugby World Cup. For you travel is all about design inspiration. Tell us about the Parisian must-sees on your to-do list.
I hadn’t been to Paris since before Covid so it was so great to be back, and autumn is such a beautiful time of year. Ogata, the Japanese restaurant, teashop and boutique in the Marais, was number one on both of our lists and it was almost as if we were transported to Japan. Not only was the food incredible, but the little teahouse downstairs and the atelier and store selling these beautiful teas is so specific to that space, but also to Paris in general.
Laura Gonzales’s new store The Gallery is also incredible. It’s not a huge space, but the colour, textures, materiality, shapes and forms she uses are mind blowing. My creative mind gets taken to the next level every time I travel to Paris. L’Objet has also opened up with two stores just up the road from each other, one for scent, one for interiors, and then Simrane is another favourite for beautiful textiles.
What do you think it is about Paris that it is so infused with good taste?
It is the pinnacle of style, fashion and design. There’s just something about Paris that draws you in constantly, looking back at the forms and the textures in the buildings, and that kind of classicism. And as an interior stylist, with the trends I see – there’s always that sort of European influence. It’s not Italian, it’s not Danish. It’s very much about beautiful French details. I think in every sort of work, whether it is a bouclé́-covered sculptural armchair or a hand carved bust, referenced at Atelier Brancusi and Galerie LMG – one of my favourite places in Paris – those influences don’t only trickle down into local designers’ work but I see it as a broad global trend.
Let’s talk a little bit about your background and where your career started.
My first job was actually in a deli. Even that, just being creative with food, links into styling and lifestyle. And then I studied interior design at Enmore Design Centre and then went into the world of magazines as an editorial stylist, and that’s where I really honed my skills. I think getting to be able to create different trends and making sure that the reader, every time they turn the page, gets hit with “that’s the trend, that’s my point of view” is what helped me not only to discover, but I guess honed, my design DNA, and also kept me abreast of what’s happening locally.
Maison & Objet is the biggest interiors and homewares design fair in the world. It happens twice a year in Paris and I remember going there and finding trends, and I came up the ranks with that. Now my business has morphed into partnering with lots of amazing brands I never thought I would partner with. We now create events and a masterclass series. It has gone from being creative in the food and then the editorial and interiors space to now having my business, which spans a few different spectrums.
Tell us about the purchase of your Orange home, which we’ve all seen on Instagram. How did you and your partner of 14 years, Michael Booth, find that property?
It was Michael’s idea. He thought, “You know what, we’re spending lots of time travelling and we have a great life, but let’s do something we can sink our teeth into with a garden”, because he loves nature and horticulture, and then there’s me with interiors. We searched for three and a half years. We drove all around New South Wales and then we finally found Rosedale in Orange. We’ve been there for six and a half years, renovating this 1877 Georgian home, and we thought we would give it a lick of paint, renovate the inside, do the kitchen, do the bathrooms and be done in six months, and then just have it to potter around in. It’s turned into six and a half years of rewiring, replumbing, redoing every single wall for rising damp.
It’s been an absolute journey. But I think my design aesthetic has stayed true to the heritage of the house. Now we have two guesthouses so people can come and stay. It’s been an exhausting project, but in the best possible way. We’re the seventh owners and hopefully we’ve given it a new lease on life and something that can continue into the next 50, 100 years.
Tell us about the gardens, because you’ve literally replanted it all.
We’ve redone everything. The house paddock when we first bought the property was one acre and Mikey and landscape architect Christopher Nicholas have done nine acres. It’s grown and grown. We put in the orchard and a one-acre vegetable garden, a pool paddock, an orangerie. One year after we bought the property we went into that crazy drought for about three years. We planted about 26,000 to 30,000 plants and lost a few during that period, but now we’re back up to our total tally, at roughly 32,000 trees, plants and shrubs. We have a nursery at the back, which Michael tinkers away in, and it has 3000 topiary balls. It’s so nice being outside and it’s so vastly different from my world in the city and when I’m travelling. It grounds me.
You also recently opened up the garden.
Yes, last month we did our first ever open garden. We had 500 people over a weekend for The National Trust and raised money for that charity. We never set out to have this big farm, but as the process went along and we created this magical garden and property, we decided we wanted to have people enjoy it. They’ve seen it on social media and been invested in our journey, but seeing people enjoy it in person is pretty special.
Tell us about your masterclasses on the property.
Funnily enough, they were born out of Covid and a lot of the things that I share on Instagram, which I wanted to translate into a full-day event. So I say it’s a mix between an interiors workshop and a wedding. Everyone turns up in the morning, we have a beautiful brunch, and then we go into me talking about where I’ve come from and my styling 101. I touch on all the different elements of design, layout, colour, pattern, texture, materiality and the flow of a space. And then we go into demonstrations. I show how to style up a complete living room. For me, styling is really about those soft finishing touches, and so sharing how to create a vignette on a coffee table, or how to style a cushion or a throw. And then we show them how to style a bed and then we do a house and garden tour, and then we sit down for a beautiful lunch. In the afternoon there is a dessert installation, and then everyone leaves with a fabulous goodie bag. We work with the Orange Tourism Board so guests can stay in town.
Are there certain “Steve rules” for these vignettes?
Absolutely. And it’s the smallest details. The number-one thing I talk about is about three different heights and creating these groupings, but also thinking about different planes. We don’t want everything to be in one dimension. We want to bring things forward and push things back. Our eyes should always travel. They should never rest on one thing and see things laid out in a one-dimensional plane. We want to be able to move to different heights and low points. A beautiful vase of hydrangeas in front of us, that could be a high point. Then you want to have a coffee table book as the mid, and then maybe it’s a beautiful tray with something gorgeous on it as your low point.
And what about colour?
Colour is one of those things you need to be confident with, like Laura Gonzales in Paris, Kit Kemp in London and Arent & Pyke locally. They all have a really great sense of colour and what works together to give you a little jolt but also works harmoniously. I talk about this a lot in my work and masterclass, about how to complement but also contrast. You want things that are going to be able to work together, but maybe there’s a pop of hot colour in the corner and you don’t know why that works but it does. Having that balance is a really strong tool to be able to master. If not, instead embrace a neutral kind of monochromatic style and colour palette. Start with a really crisp, fresh white wall. And then, maybe there’s a great artwork, or maybe there’s a really fantastic rug that has lots of different blues and you use that one hero colour. Maybe it’s a beautiful cobalt blue and then you work down tonally with shades of that colour – a sky blue or a dusty grey, duck egg blue. So when you walk into the room you’ve got this harmony, but there’s also this beautiful staggered texture that creates the drama and again allows your eye to travel around the space.
Talking of spaces, do you then sit down and create these little vignettes in your mind, or are you constantly physically moving things around?
Constantly. I think that’s the thing, working my way up from magazines means that I see everything as a picture. So I want to create these well edited, curated vignettes. A space should always tell the story about where that family comes from, where they’re going and give a sense of their soul, reflecting their journey. So all those little vignettes should work individually, but also harmoniously, when we look at the overall space. I’m constantly moving things around. I get very bored because I have a creative brain, so I just move a stool, or maybe every few weeks I move some bigger piece of furniture because it completely changes the space. And I think we’re so invested in our homes now that we want to be able to do things that are inexpensive, moving things from one room to the next, a cushion from the lounge room can go to the bedroom and vice versa, and it completely changes the space.
Steve’s picks of Paris
Le Paul Bistrot
Whenever I travel, I always seek out the ‘Grandma’ or ‘Nonna’ restaurants for authentic family style food, and Le Paul Bistrot is exactly that. All of the French faves including steak frites and Paris brest cake, cooked to perfection, plated simply and packed with classic flavour.
Cafe Kitsune
A perfect little spot to start your day with a coffee and granola.
Wild and the Moon
My favourite ‘Bondi’ cafe in the heart of Paris, when the croissants and pastries start stacking up.
Musée de l’Orangerie
One of my favourite spots in Paris, inside the Tuileries garden, is the art gallery of impressionist and post impressionist paintings Musée de l’Orangerie. Most famous for housing eight permanent Water Lily murals by Monet - which silence me no matter how many times I see them - it also serves as a welcome refuge from the busy streets of Paris.
Samaritaine Paris Pont-Neuf
There is no shortage of fabulous department stores in Paris, but Samaritaine with its 215,000 square feet of retail space, may just be my fave.
Laura Gonzales
Touted at the ‘Queen of mix and match’, Laura Gonzalez opened her ‘Gallery’ in the 7th arrondissement’, full of colour, pattern, bespoke furniture and accessories and a whole lot of whimsy.
Musée Rodin
Whenever I travel to Paris, my first stop is always the Rodin Museum. The Beaux-arts-style building and garden always make me happy and the sculptures and artwork are the cherries on top.
Drole de Monsieur
Founded in 2014, self-made designers Dany dos Santos and Maxime Schwab have created a unique menswear label, blending streetwear and tailored classics inspired by the 1970s and 1990s with their brand motto ‘Not from Paris Madame’, ensuring their clothes express positive energy no matter where you are from.
Chateau Voltaire
It may be the ‘it’ hotel, but the service, location and the design combine into one perfectly poised Parisian hotel, that is intimate and discreet and filled with unique artwork from the owner’s personal collection.
This story appears in the December issue of WISH Magazine, out now.
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