Hôtel Balzac Is Paris Fashion Week’s New Best-Kept Secret

Legend has it that Honoré de Balzac drank upwards of 50 cups of Turkish coffee per day, powering the French author to write 19th-century classics including Monsieur Griot and The Human Comedy. His writing day apparently began at 2 a.m. and ended at noon. While my schedule was not quite as nocturnal (nor prolific), I often found myself up until 2 a.m. due to jetlag and fall 2025 Paris Fashion Week reviews during my recent stay at the well-appointed Hôtel Balzac. Located on the Rue Balzac, in a sweet but sleepy corner of the 8th arrondissement but mere steps from the bustling Champs-Élysées, the hotel occupies the site of the hôtel particulier where Honoré housed his paramour, the Polish countess Ewelina Hańska.

It is fitting that the namesake of the 58-room hotel loved coffee, because—though he may have taken his black—the palette of the space is almost exclusively varying shades of mocha: from latte to cortado to espresso. Designed by the extremely good-looking French design duo, Charlotte de Tonnac and Hugo Sauzay of Festen, the pair applied their elegant, restrained eye to create an Art Deco-inspired and Japanese-influenced haven.

Photo: Matthieu Salvaing

Photo: Matthieu Salvaing

During the most recent fashion week, the Haussmannian establishment was accommodating to editors—but not a scene. For example, you could actually spill the tea in their Earl Grey-hued breakfast room (to painfully continue the caffeinated metaphor), unlike other boutique hotels where you have to look over your shoulder anytime you mention a fashion editor’s name. Fashion week habitués clustered in the sky-lit lounge throughout the fall shows in March. One night, while already in my pajamas, a buyer friend texted to say a group was downstairs enjoying a platter of Ibérico bellota and one of the complex house cocktails, all named for different Balzac works such as Comédie Humaine, a shochu and jasmine concoction. I joined them, and it felt like a fashion sleepover in the chicest dortoir. (The hotel also shares an address with the famed Michelin-starred Pierre Gagnaire restaurant, in case you are looking for more than Ibérico.)