Fit Check

FOR FASHION ENTREPRENEUR YAEL AFLALO AND HER FAMILY, HOME IS A WELL-TAILORED TOWN HOUSE IN NYC'S WEST VILLAGE

- PAOLA SINGER

For more than a decade now, Hugo Sauzay and Charlotte de Tonnac of Paris-based interiors studio Festen have been quietly reshaping the European hotel landscape, bringing a spare, sensual elegance to properties like Splendido Mare in Portofino and the newly revived Hôtel Balzac in Paris. Even before they became the It couple for stylish stays, one of their early projects captivated American fashion entrepreneur Yael Aflalo.

She was staying with her family at Les Roches Rouges on the Côte d'Azur, and felt immediately at home at the resort's boho-modernist rooms.

"What drew me in was the sense of ease and individuality," says Aflalo, founder of the era-defining Reformation, and more recently, an eponymous ready-to-wear line. "Their spaces felt thoughtful but unforced, with unique pieces that made me think of an artist's home." When she and her Swedish husband, creative director Ludvig Frössén, decided to renovate their sixstory West Village town house, Festen was their first and only choice. "I had them in my head and spent a lot of time going through their work," she says. "And then when we bought this house, I was like, 'Those are the designers that I love.""