Extravagant, grand, opulent and yet minimal, Joseph Dirand’s Paris apartment project is an exercise in pure luxury.The designer who has worked on projects for fashion houses such as Balmain, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Chloe and Pucci, as well as the Louvre’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs restaurant, Loulou, was given complete creative freedom and an almost limitless budget to realise this design.

Commissioned by the heiress of an Eastern European fortune, Dirand transformed his client’s two large apartments on Paris’ Avenue Montaigne, 600 square metres of absolute luxury into a residential gallery space, where each object and piece of furniture is revered as a work of art.

Impressive in scale, and as dramatic as it is pared back, the residence is informed by a monochromatic palette of pale whites and creams and dark greys and blacks. Furniture and artworks from the likes of Vladimir Kagan and François‑Xavier Lalanne, each a sculptural masterpiece (some two-dimensional, some three), which would appear untouchable.