On a recent morning, Alexis Mabille showed up bright and early on the Champs-Elysées looking a bit bleary-eyed. And with good reason: he had just a few days left to deliver no fewer than two dozen party dresses for a megawatt wedding, and wrap up his biggest interior project to date, the nearly year-long renovation of the legendary cabaret hall Lido 2. On top of which he’d spent a sleepless night tending to a sick cat.
Even so, the designer was ebullient as he entered the cabaret—whose landmark modernist façade faces the planned Louis Vuitton hotel—and sauntered down an LED-lined entrance hall longer than many a Paris runway. As of last week, the entryway was lit-up with the first of its rotating video installation; the plan is that they will change depending on the event or the season. (A Jules Verne-esque installation, complete with snow machine, is lined up for Christmas). That and other pre-attractions are meant to catch the eye—and Instagrams—of the 350,000 or so people who walk down the Champs-Elysées on a typical day.
“There was no way we could transform such a Parisian institution into something basic, but we also didn’t want to just do a traditional renovation,” says Mabille, who counts Le Boeuf Sur le Toit, Cipriani Saint Tropez, and Kaspia Los Angeles among his recent projects. “We wanted to do something completely immersive, in collaboration with top video specialists, so that people can see a spectacle even when the Lido is closed,” he adds, motioning to where red velvet curtains would be hung to privatize gala dinners and film, theater, or fashion events.
What began in February as a minor facelift blossomed into a full-blown gut renovation as the architect Philippe Pumain, Lido director Jean-Luc Choplin, and Mabille tapped armies of specialized artisans to give the 1,000-seat venue the intimacy of a bijou Parisian concert hall.
The idea, Mabille explains, was to reconnect with the Lido’s original 1930s inspiration—the city of Venice—and cherry-pick inspiration from the venue’s heydays. There are nods to the Années Folles (the 1920s, more or less), and the ’70s and ’80s. The result is a playful mashup of references to icons like Erté, Josephine Baker, designer Jean Royère, and the Empire State Building, to name but a few, with sparkly fabrics by Soiries Cheval, elaborately mirrored walls by Rose Atelier, generous curved bars fitted with backlit gold-toned marble, and monumental drop-down crystal chandeliers. Meanwhile, technical teams worked to preserve and upgrade the Lido’s most famous features: fountains, and a parterre engineered to sink by two and a half feet as soon as the lights go down.
“We wanted it to be as festive as paillettes,” says Mabille of the adaptable space. “It can be Broadway in a dream living room in Paris, but it can also be a party venue, teatime with an aquatic spectacle, a nightclub, a music hall, a cabaret.”
The first production in the re-opened venue is a tribute to Stephen Sondheim, an English-language production of Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Forum that runs through February 4th. Next up: a 50th-anniversary staging of The Rocky Horror Show. Eventually, explains, Lido 2 director Choplin, it will be a place to appreciate brand-new creations. “This will be home in Paris for the best in international musical theater, but we ll also be doing original productions,” he said. “I’d like to offer some lessons in slowing down in a world built for speed.”