Frédéric Malle once worked at an ad agency, and for a while he pursued photography, but he probably shouldn't have bothered. He was born in Paris into the upper reaches of the French perfume industry. His grandfather founded the fragrance arm of Christian Dior, and his mother worked for decades as the company's artistic director. Did he ever think he was going to escape the scent business?
Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle is a French company based in Paris. But in 2005 France voted down the European Union constitution, and Frédéric and his wife, Marie, became furious at what they consider a cowardly ratification of Gallic self-interest. Immediately, they began making plans to transfer their household to New York. "People were terrified that they would lose all the privileges and job protection that go with socialism," says Frédéric. "That disgusted me."
The 3,000-square-foot Upper East Side apartment the Malles settled on is a hulking triplex that evokes the soaring ateliers of the Bauhaus pioneers. With the couple came their brash and edgy mix of furniture by the master Art Deco cabinetmaker Jules Leleu, classic French and English upholstery, an explosive collection of modern art, and the inevitable midcentury pieces by Noguchi and Platner.
Frédéric works among stray Cheerios at a Saarinen table in the breakfast room that also serves as his ad hoc office. "I like balance, but unstable balance," he says, folded into an Arne Jacobsen leather Egg chair in the living room. "Over there you've got a giant Veronese beside a Jeff Wall light box, set on a Styrofoam-like honeycomb bookcase by Sean Yoo. It's the same deck of cards I played with in our Paris flat, the same Castiglioni lamp, Anthony Caro sculpture, and Poul Henningsen chandelier. Only now the cards are reshuffled."
Tougher matters occupied Marie on her first days in New York. After shuttering her psychology practice in Paris to continue her education here, she was accepted at the NYU Psychoanalytic Institute but then denied enrollment when New York State refused to recognize her French degree as being equal to an American Ph.D. Pas de problème: She signed up at NYU to obtain a master's degree in social work. As part of her training, she spends three long, emotionally exhausting days every week counseling cancer patients and their families. Often she arrives home just in time to sign off on the dinner menu, drawn up by a Japanese cook, and to snuggle up with her four children to watch the (French) evening news.
Frédéric decides what goes where–which Renaissance bronze sits on which Knoll table–but Marie retains veto power. It's a French tradition that may surprise their American neighbors. "She knows exactly what is right but has no interest in doing it," Frédéric explains, and Marie concurs: "I know what I like, but I'm not going to spend hours debating the turn of a chair leg. In Paris I asked Frédéric to move a big John Coplans photograph of a man's hand from our bedroom to the salon because all I could see was this one knuckle hair, which is really quite repulsive. Here the picture hangs out of the way, where the kids play video games. I can live with it."
