Paris
Baron de Rede: “All I want is the best of everything, and there’s very little of that left."
On the Quai Anjou, Île Saint-Louis, linger by the beautiful 17th Century Hôtel Lambert, where Chopin composed, George sand wrote and Voltaire shacked up with his mistress. Here partied Alexis, Baron de Rede: Aesthete, Collector, Rent Boy, a man ‘très occupé doing nothing’, humbly dedicated to pleasure and to hosting Balls featuring life-sized papier-mâché elephants and Nubian slaves. All Paris reeled when the Hotel passed into the hands of the brother of the Emir of Qatar in 2007, and he announced his intention to install lifts, air-conditioning and an underground carpark. When you wander home for madeleines and a digestif, have a read of this. Très amusant.
