Mandarin Oriental, Paris

Every Mandarin Oriental has a fan. In Paris, the hotel asked Maison Lesage, the great couture embroidery house, to make its own. It took more than two hundred hours, with velvet, pearls, sequins and coloured butterflies. An Asian emblem made by the hands of Paris haute couture: a beautiful piece of work, and a rather revealing introduction to the hotel on rue Saint-Honoré.

The name comes from two Asian institutions. The Oriental on the river in Bangkok and the Mandarin in Hong Kong built their reputations not simply on rooms or restaurants, but on an unmistakable way of being a hotel. There is warmth in the formality, a sense that people and habits matter more than the decoration. Mandarin Oriental does not expect every property to look alike. Yet anyone familiar with those older hotels may arrive in Paris and wonder where that particular feeling has gone. Nothing needs to be wrong for something to feel different.

Here the answer is largely in the design. Sybille de Margerie dressed the hotel in silk, lacquer, dark wood and shades of plum, pink and orange. Butterflies appear in crystal above reception and silver leaf beneath your feet in the spa. Every surface seems to have been considered, and many are lovely. The house is polished, playful and unmistakably of the Paris fashion world. Replace the name on the door with that of another luxury design hotel, and surprisingly little inside would contradict you.

Upstairs, there is plenty to admire and, unusually for this part of Paris, room to move. A Superior starts at thirty-seven square metres, although it faces rue Saint-Honoré and comes with a shower rather than a bath. Deluxe Rooms have thirty-nine square metres, while the forty-two-square-metre Mandarin Rooms look towards the garden or courtyard and have freestanding tubs. Some rooms have balconies; not all do. If you want somewhere to sit apart from the bed, a fifty-five-square-metre Junior Suite is a more convincing choice. At these prices, check the outlook and the bathroom, not just the category.

The courtyard garden is the hotel's most persuasive room, though it has no walls. Camellias and jasmine surround a black-marble fountain, and the noise of the shopping street falls away. Breakfast at Camélia can be congee and dim sum or the most Parisian of croissants. Later, the restaurant offers French cooking and the garden makes an excellent excuse to come home between the Tuileries and the boutiques. Here, the hotel stops trying quite so hard to be looked at. It is simply pleasant to be in.

The spa has a fourteen-metre indoor swimming pool, a steam room and treatments in private suites. Its butterfly motifs may be extravagant, but an hour in the pool is a practical pleasure, particularly in a city that can keep you walking all day. The wellness facilities are reserved for hotel guests, while treatments are booked separately. It is a very good city-hotel arrangement. And that, perhaps, is the distinction: the hotel does many things very well. What it does not always do is make them feel unmistakably Mandarin Oriental.

A substantial renovation is scheduled to begin at the end of October 2026 while the hotel remains open in phases. Tara Bernerd is redesigning the rooms and public spaces; Humbert & Poyet are taking on the restaurants and bar, all planned around the garden. Anyone booking during the work should ask exactly which facilities will be available. It will be interesting to see whether the next version adds some ease to the accomplishment.

The Lesage fan is exquisite. But if you fell for Mandarin Oriental in Asia, you may leave Paris impressed by the hotel and still slightly surprised by how little the name tells you about the feeling inside.