The ‘fan’ at Mandarin Oriental, Paris
The fan is the luxurious and elegant symbol of Mandarin Oriental. Classically simple, visually elegant and indisputably a part of the Orient, the eleven-bladed fan ties together each of the Group’s hotels into the single identity of the luxury hotel group.  Each of the Group’s hotels creates a fan that conveys the property’s uniqueness and personality.

Sybille de Margerie commissioned Maison Lesage to create the fan for Mandarin Oriental, Paris.  Who better than this legendary firm to represent the world of Parisian haute couture that is the inspiration for the hotel. Sybille de Margerie, who has always been fascinated by Lesage's passion and savoir-faire, personally supervised the creation so that the style of this unique work might perfectly transcribe the spirit of the hotel.  She and Maison Lesage chose the colours and materials together.  The fan has been brilliantly executed by a talented artist, using velvet, glacé leather, vintage sequins, pearls and coloured butterflies.  It is beauty and a dream brought to life, in the grand tradition of Parisian haute couture.

The luxury of the Lesage fan lies in the choice of precious and original materials, but also in the painstaking work that gave form to an idea.  More than 200 hours went into the making of this fan using two types of embroidery:  needlepoint and the Luneville technique.  Mandarin Oriental, Paris’s fan takes pride of place in the hotel lobby.

Biographies of the artists and craftsmen

Francois LESAGE, Maison Lesage
When in 1858 Charles Frederick Worth opened the first haute couture house, he called on the talent of embroiderer Albert Michonet.  In 1924, Albert and Marie-Louise Lesage, who had previously worked with Madeleine Vionnet, bought Worth's couture workshop.  This was the beginning of close collaboration with the great names of the time:  Paquin, Poiret, Redfern, Madeleine, Vionnet and Elsa Schiaparelli.  On his father's death in 1949, François Lesage took over at the head of the firm.  He was 20 years old.  For the next 60 years, he would brilliantly adapt the excellence of a traditional savoir-faire to the unprecedented needs of a new generation of couturiers:  Christian Dior, Hubert de Givenchy, Yves Saint-Laurent, Jean-Louis Scherrer, Christian Lacroix and Jean-Paul Gaultier.

François Lesage and his staff of designers and embroiderers produce a hundred new embroidered pieces for each haute couture collection.  They join the 40,000 pieces that form the company's archives since 1858, and which still provide inspiration today.  Classed by season or by couturier, they form the largest collection of embroidery in the world.  Lesage has also safeguarded over 60 ton of supplies, including jet appliqués from 1870, iridescent crystals, cabochons, sequins and glass beads from the Roaring Twenties.

Every day, on his way to his fifth-floor office on rue de la Grange Batelière in Paris, François Lesage stops on the fourth floor to visit the embroidery school he opened in 1992.  It trains new generations of embroiderers and perpetuates this unique tradition and savoir-faire.

Nathalie DECOSTER, sculptor
Nathalie Decoster is a French sculptor who has lived and worked in Paris since 1985.  Her work is influenced by several themes.  They each examine the human condition, such as Man in relation to Time, Man and Nature, and ways of thinking.  Her sculpted bronze figures, which incorporate reclaimed materials such as concrete reinforcements, mattress springs and barrel hoops, belong to a profoundly human, contemplative body of work whose reflections can be philosophical or humorous.  Nathalie Decoster's visual language is anchored in a vision of time and our fragile human lives.  The contrast between the tiny figures and the giant symbols which confront them generates a sense of infinity.  Often, she represents time as a circle in reference to the eternal and reassuring cycle of the seasons.  Air, her sculpture for Mandarin Oriental, Paris, is suspended in the lobby; a symbol of fragile liberty, hanging from a thread.

Marcello LO GIUDICE, artist and sculptor
Enter a world of texture with this artist whose landscapes are carefully metamorphosed from objects and painting.  Born in Taormina in 1955, and after a brief experiment with conceptual art in the 1970s using traces of wax, strawberries and smoke, Marcello Lo Giudice turned to very large format painting.  He uses the energy of light and metamorphosis to create isolated landscapes, which he empties, burns and ransacks.  He then applies layers of colour.  Since 2003, he has worked on a series of exuberant, colourful totem-sculptures using pigments and enamel.  These works have become icons of our time and are sought-after by collectors all over the world.  His unique creations can be seen in the lobby of Mandarin Oriental, Paris.

Ali MAHDAVI, photographer
A photographer and designer working with leading names in fashion and the visual arts, Ali Mahdavi was born in Teheran in 1974.  After graduating from the Ecole Boule and the Ecole Nationale des Arts Appliqués Duperré, he began his career designing for Thierry Mugler.  He creates a strange and unsettling idea of beauty with undertones of 1930s Hollywood.  "I fantasise my ideas by idealising them, fashioning them into something incredibly sophisticated."  His photographs take aesthetics to an extreme; glamour is, he is convinced, fundamental to a woman's beauty.  His work has been shown internationally, with solo shows in London, Geneva, and Paris.  Ali Mahdavi is the author of the portraits in the suites of Mandarin Oriental, Paris.

Thierry BISCH, animal portraitist
Born in Strasbourg in 1953 to a family of industrialists, from an early age Thierry Bisch was influenced by the work of his great-grandfather, the artist Louis Janmot.  In 1978 he moved to Toulouse, where he was accepted at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to study life drawing.  In 1984 he moved north to Paris, where he co-founded Réflexes, an independent record label.  He was also involved with the creation of Zoulou, a magazine for artists and designers.  In 1986 he wrote and directed a film on fashion designer Thierry Mugler, going on to become Mugler's personal assistant for photography and special projects.  Since 2001, Thierry Bisch has been artist-in-residence at the Lutétia in Paris.  In 2007 he was promoted to the rank of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.  His animal portraits have won international acclaim.  Thierry Bisch has painted a magnificent canvas for the Suite Royale Mandarin, and a quadriptych on diasec for the Suite Royale Orientale at Mandarin Oriental, Paris.

Gérard ROVERI, sculptor
A graduate of the Ecole d'Arts Graphiques de Tours, Gérard Roveri first worked in advertising, as an illustrator, and in fashion, as a textile designer.  His discovery of the tradition of Ndebele house painting in South Africa in the 1990s inspired him to embark on a personal project.  This would be the beginning of his "imprints" which mix raw materials such as earth, sand and pigments.  This is also when he began exploring textures, carving grooves into wood, hollowing trunks in search of knots, incorporating pigments to highlight veins.  He added metal to wood, folding, hammering and incising.  Vibrant colour clashes reveal the whole.  In 2002 Gérard Roveri began working on a monumental scale:  his metallic wall sculptures radiate an intense, physical, tactile, sensual presence.  His work can be seen at Jean-Luc Méchiche Gallery in Paris.  Gérard Roveri has created an exceptional wall-hung work for the suite Royale Mandarin.

Jean-Baptiste HUYNH, photographer
Born in Chateauroux in 1966 to a French mother and a Vietnamese father, Jean-Baptiste Huynh developed a taste for photography as a teenager.  Self-taught and determined, he focused his attention on light and lighting to develop a vernacular without artifice, based on balance and clarity.  His professional career began in 1989.  His photographs are often of a single subject, softly lit against a dark background.  They capture an expression, the fleeting language of the eyes for eternity.  He is the author of nine books on portraiture, writing being an equally important aspect of his work.  Jean-Baptiste Huynh has risen to international acclaim; his work has been shown in galleries and museums in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan and Paris.  He is represented by Sonnabend Gallery in New York.  In 2012 he will show his latest series of photographs at the Louvre.  Several of Jean-Baptiste Huynh's photographs are hung on the walls of the Suite Royale Mandarin and the Suite Royale Orientale at Mandarin Oriental, Paris.