Home/The Parlour
The Parlour
Ninety-eight years
of doing one thing properly.
The same first floor on rue de Miromesnil since 1927. The marble counters have never moved.
The house
A first floor above a hatter.
Hélène Marchand opened the Maison in the spring of 1927, on the first floor of a townhouse that had a hatter below and a piano teacher above. The hatter closed in 1961, the piano teacher in 1978, and the Maison is still here.
What has changed is everything you cannot see. The ventilation was rebuilt in 2003, the sterilisation in 2011, and the lacquer library replaced entirely in 2016 when we went ten-free. The counters, the mirrors and the tea trolley are original.
- Hospital-grade autoclave sterilisation
- Ten-free, vegan lacquer library of 340 shades
- Hand-painted artwork by two resident artists
- Private rooms for waxing and facial treatments
The founder's rules
Three, written in 1927
Sterilised in front of you
Every tool comes out of a sealed autoclave pouch at your table, opened where you can see it. Hélène insisted on it forty years before anybody required it, and it is still the first thing we show new clients.
Never booked short
An Émeraude manicure takes an hour and is booked for an hour. We would rather turn away the last appointment of the day than rush the one before it.
The trolley at four
Tea, and something from the pâtisserie on the corner, brought round at four whether you are finished or not. It has been missed twice: in 1968, and during a power cut in 1994.
The room
What we have kept.
The marble counters, the etched glass partition, the brass fan grilles and the 1927 mirrors with their original silvering, which is now slightly foxed at the edges and which we have twice been advised to replace.
Six stations in the main room, two private rooms behind the partition for waxing and facials, and a small back room with one chair where the artists work when a set is going to take three hours.
The building is listed. The tea trolley, unofficially, is as well.
And what we have replaced
The ventilation, entirely — six air changes an hour with extraction at every station. The lighting, to daylight-balanced, which is the only honest light to choose a lacquer under. And the floor, in 2009, after eighty-two years.
See the Artists' BookA chronology
Ninety-eight years
| 1927 | Hélène Marchand opens on the first floor, two stations |
|---|---|
| 1940 | Closed for four years; the counters are hidden behind a false wall |
| 1952 | Reopens with six stations and the etched partition |
| 1974 | Hélène's niece Solange takes over the house |
| 1996 | The private rooms are added for waxing and facials |
| 2003 | Ventilation rebuilt; the room stops smelling of a salon |
| 2011 | Autoclave sterilisation, long before it was required |
| 2016 | The lacquer library goes ten-free and vegan, 340 shades |
| 2026 | Same floor, same counters, same trolley at four |
Come and see the room.
First-time clients are asked to arrive fifteen minutes early, which is mostly an excuse to give you a tour.