Night-Scented

Isabelle Arbaud had sunk what must have been a substantial portion of her start-up funds into purchasing the hôtel Lambert, an imposing seventeenth-century mansion on the Ile Saint Louis. Given its stately central courtyard, its three floors of panelled rooms and galleries and its extensive enclosed garden, the acquisition was an unambiguous statement of Arbaud’s ambition to embody a very specific form of refined, elegant, and virtually unobtainable luxury.