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"View Slideshow\n\nThis story is part of ourAD Archive series, featuring legendary homes and gardens we've published over the years. It was originally printed in the August 1976 issue.\n\nHe lives in a historical monument on the \u00CEle Saint-Louis overlooking the Seine, counts among his clients Guy de Rothschild and Antenor Pati\u00F1o, pursues the glamorous life of Tout-Paris with his mannequin-looking wife, Betty, and hates furniture.\n\nFran\u00E7ois Catroux burst onto the Paris scene in the middle of the 1960s, when he settled here after ten years of constant traveling. One day a friend dropped in with an Italian lady. As they left, she asked if he would like to decorate her palace in Milan. The lady was couturiere Mila Sch\u00F6n, and the project was a great success.\n\nThus launched internationally, Catroux soon had projects from all over the world\u2014except France.\n\n\"Most of my patrons have their origins outside France,\" he says. \"I think it's a question of taste. Perhaps my designs are not \u2018decorated' enough.\"\n\nThis hardly disturbs him, for he is delighted about his employers. \"To talk about them too much would sound terribly snobbish, because they are all \u2018names.'\" Some come back to him many times. He has done three homes for Se\u00F1or Pati\u00F1o\u2014in Mexico, Portugal, and now at Fontainebleau.\n\nRemarkably sanguine about his work, the designer is willing to concede that he cannot please everyone.\n\n\"When people come to me,\" he says, \"they either like what I do, or they don't. When they like it, they're hundred percent enthusiasts,\" This trust permits him to follow his own instincts, rather than bending them to a client's peculiarities. \"My clients already have a strong sense of what suits them, and it corresponds with my own ideas.\" Most clients end up as friends.\n\nCatroux is currently excited about H\u00F4tel Lambert, just around the corner from his apartment, the 17th-century mansion recently purchased by Guy de Rothschild. Together with Italian designer Lorenzo Mongiardino, Catroux will redo the interior to house both the Rothschilds and their museum-quality collections of furniture and art. \"The challenge is to create a sort of museum that can also be lived in.\"\n\nHis respect for architecture is not limited to 17th-century Paris. Attracted to the American architects Richard Neutra, Mies van der Rohe, I.M. Pei, Eero Saarinen and Philip Johnson, Catroux admires a lack of fussiness. A native of Algeria, he is intrigued by the mysterious quality of Persian architecture. These influences are reflected in a rather stripped-down, vaguely Oriental look of his own.\n\nHe has lived in his current apartment for nine years, changing the decor twice. In the past it was very modern\u2014partly because of the era, partly because of precarious finances.\n\n\"I didn't have much money then,\" he explains. \"So I did things very cheaply. Impressive for photographs, but not so wonderful for living.\"\n\nThat was in 1968, when everyone loved plastic. \"The old decor was a success, but finally I had enough.\"\n\nHe recognizes now that he has a reputation for being very expensive even in an expensive city, but he is not sure why. The answer, no doubt, has much to do with quality.\n\n\"Coming to me is a bit like going to Cartier,\" he says without false modesty. \"I have things made to order.\"\n\nThese criteria show in the underpinnings of his own apartment. \"Even in the beginning, with my modern emphasis, all the basics were done well. It was only the decoration that was cheap.\" Consequently, the decor for his flat is like changing a stage set. \"See, all these screens are mounted magnetically and lift right off. Nothing is nailed down. If I decided tomorrow to redo the place in Louis XIV, I could keep this until the last second, take it down in a day, and replace it with Louis XIV\u2014et voil\u00E0!\"\n\nAlthough it is improbable that Louis XIV decor will replace the bamboo screens and leather and suede couches and pillows chez Catroux, the designer himself seems able to move easily from modern to 17th century.\n\nFor example, his country house near Deauville is an old Normandy house. \"It has chintz everywhere. It's a Norman manor, so what can you do? You cannot violate the essential mood.\"\n\nHis trademark for contemporary design is mostly the result of being confronted with old, crumbling interiors. But when there are antiques and fine objects, Catroux designs around them with great care.\n\n\"I do not throw everything out to make a modern decor,\" he says. \"I love a m\u00E9lange. But I hate copies and will not do faux Louis XVI!\"\n\nHe yearns to do an entire house, outside and inside, but such opportunities are rare in Europe. \"There aren't many good modern houses here,\" he explains, \"because you have to let an architect work to the limits of his imagination, and people don't like to do that.\" And, too, there are a great many lovely older homes. \"Why build a modern house when you can buy a beautiful antique one?\"\n\nHis affection for the past does not extend to the Art Nouveau or Art Deco periods. \"Art Deco is just furniture. Myself, I would never go out and buy two night tables for a bedroom. Never!\" He designs his own furniture, but it is elegantly unobtrusive. \"Masses that melt into the spaces of rooms, screens, different qualities of transparency, different levels\u2014that's what I like.\" Catroux smiles, \"And I really detest furniture.\"\n\nView a slide show of Fran\u00E7ois Catroux's Paris apartment."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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