Contemporary vision
Hilary Swank recently tapped Axel Huynh, creative director of the 150-year-old French furniture company Henryot & Cie, to decorate her Paris apartment. The generously proportioned daybeds, designed by Axel Huynh for Henryot & Cie, flank a custom cocktail table, also created by Henryot & Cie, made from wood trunks sourced from the forest near the furniture maker’s factory. To cement the seriousness of her new relationship, Swank, who also has homes in Los Angeles and New York, purchased an apartment in a historic building on the Left Bank. With its soaring ceilings, polished herringbone floors, intricate moldings, marble fireplaces, and large windows, the apartment has the beautiful bones and soft filtered light that herald the European capital’s best spaces. To help make the apartment her own, Swank turned to Axel Huynh, founder of event-planning agency CrazyBaby and creative director of the 150-year-old French furniture company Henryot & Cie.
While the original plan was for Axel Huynh to design a piece of furniture for the home, his role quickly morphed into that of an interior designer. “He has this joie de vivre that I instantly gravitated toward,” says Swank. Actress Hilary Swank reclines on a daybed upholstered in velvet and leather by Dedar Milano and designed by Axel Huynh for Henryot & Cie. Naturally, Axel Huynh channeled that exuberance into a collection of custom, handcrafted pieces by Henryot & Cie that echo the stateliness of the home’s architecture and surroundings. A sensuously shaped green marble desk in an office off the living room has become one of Swank’s favorite furnishings, combining stone sourced from Solid Nature in the Netherlands and a base painstakingly inlaid with marquetry. “They just don’t make them the way they used to,” says Swank, who appreciates even the smallest details of traditional construction. But there’s also a sense of midcentury flair and modern edge throughout the apartment. Retro daybeds with sleek, geometric profiles punctuate the living space, and in the dining room, the legs of cane-back round side chairs are sheathed in a blue lacquer.
A contemporary feel also comes by way of moody jewel-inspired colors. “Hilary likes an organic touch,” says Axel Huynh. “Wood, stones, and she loves everything related to the sea.” Hence Ginger and Jagger’s oysterlike wall lamps in Carrara and Nero Marquina marble in the dining room and the sapphire and emerald hues that appear throughout the space. In the living room, the daybeds are covered in cobalt and aquamarine silk velvets, while azure curtains hang at the windows; a rich turquoise coats the dining room walls. “We played with a palette of blue and also brought in some yellows,” Axel Huynh says. “It’s a bit inspired by Saul Bass, a graphic designer from the ‘60s, so monochrome tones mixed with bright colors, and the combination is a little bit vintage.” But Swank isn’t expecting too much downtime. This year she’ll star with Helena Bonham Carter in 55 Steps, the story of a schizophrenic woman’s fight against the medical establishment, and Steven Soderbergh’s highly anticipated heist flick Lucky Logan, as well as The One Percent, a buzzy television drama by Alejandro González Iñárritu for Starz. And, after all, she’s got a new city to explore.
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CREDITS
Interior Design by Axel Huynh Paris, Creative Director of Henryot & Cie.
Alberto Pinto, Azzedine Alaia, Blase, Cartier, Codimat Collection, Dedar Milano, Diptyque Paris, Dissidi, Dominique Roitel, François Rousseau, Ginger & Jagger, Gregory Granzan, Henryot & Cie, India Madhavi, Javier Gomez, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Magbe Camara, Marc-Antoine Barrois, Objet de Curiosité, Olfa Guemidh for Home Collection, Pierre Gonalons, Seletti, Serge Mouille Editions, Stéphane Olivier Paris, Solid Nature
Photographs by Matthieu Salvaing
Styling by Camillia Ben Rejeb Price, Hair by Ricardo Rojas, Make-up & Nails by Gloria & Chouchina for Trends’Studio Beauty
PR (US) Jim Mannino for JMPR | PR (FRANCE) Crazybaby!
