Accumulated Chic in a Sheung Wan Apartment
Inside the 85-square-metre Hollywood Road home of an art and book collector
Mathias Helleu’s apartment is on the 23rd floor of an old building in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district, where hip art galleries and antique dealers combine with dried seafood vendors and Chinese temples to fill the narrow streets.
The interior of his 85-square-metre space is likewise an eclectic mix of many pieces from different places and times.
He describes it as ‘accumulations of books, objects and paintings. A few are very big and people might think they are too big for the place, but I like to play with proportions.’
Helleu has worked in Hong Kong and London for many years, and is a partner in a contemporary art gallery in New York, which partly explains the many framed photographs and sketches atop shelves and leaning against windows.
Despite the small space, some are quite large: one a dramatic, black and white close-up of Sophia Loren, which sits on the floor near a metallic and tightly curving spiral staircase created by French industrial designer Roger Tallon.
‘I love it. It looks like it comes from an animal, like a spine,’ Helleu says of the staircase. ‘It’s a pity, some might say, as there isn’t enough space to look at it properly, but I don’t care.’
It winds — without a handrail because Helleu ‘didn’t want to destroy its iconic look’ — up to a bedroom, dressing room, terrace and a bathroom sleek with black marble and sharp, rectangular sinks. Offsetting the long and narrow space are mirrors that, especially at night, capture a dramatic skyline.
‘The lights of the buildings come on, one by one,’ says Helleu. ‘There are thousands of lights.’ This stands in stark contrast to Helleu’s own building. When he first saw it, he says, ‘it was disgusting, which I really liked. The lobby was horrible.’
Helleu knew, though, that there were open views to be had in the space upstairs. And the brief for the apartment was simple enough to take advantage: ‘I wanted to have few walls and lots of light with classic windows.’
Helleu comes from a long creative line; he says that his family didn’t necessarily influence his sense of style, but his upbringing was infused with their work.
His father was Jacques Helleu, artistic director at Chanel for more than 40 years, who turned names such as Catherine Deneuve and Nicole Kidman into icons for the French brand. His grandfather, Jean Helleu, was also an artistic director at Chanel, and his great-grandfather was Paul César Helleu, a celebrated French artist who painted the portraits of society ladies during the Belle Époque and, in 1912, designed the mural of stars for the original ceiling at New York’s Grand Central Station.
On Helleu’s desk, there is a drawing of a woman in a long gown by his great-grandfather: hair up, she is inspecting a wall of paintings; she ‘represents his wife’, says Helleu.
The past also figures in the thousands of books, collected over some 30 years, that Helleu keeps in his apartment. There are history books,biographies and art volumes.‘Some are in poor condition, but all are keepers,’ he says. ‘I love revisiting them from time to time. It’s not negotiable.
‘Nothing is practical in this apartment,’ he continues, pointing out a gold, turbine-shaped lamp that sits on a main table. ‘Lamps have to look good either in colour or form. This one is warm and shiny.’
While there is no formal dining table, Helleu still hosts groups of 15 people for meals. ‘It’s usually very casual with friends sitting around the black table’ on the main floor, he says.
This sense of informality is no accident. As Helleu says, ‘I wanted a place for me, a nest, something really comfortable, a place where I can really be myself, or with somebody, that isn’t pretentious.’
Text / Joanne Lee-Young
Images / Edmon Leong
The Small Spaces Edition
A global tour of small homes, dense cities and ways to live better in less space. In issue 24, we go inside compact residences in Bali, Singapore, Manila and Hong Kong, as well a charming abode on the Japanese coast. Plus, our regular round-up of travel, art, architecture and design from across the region and beyond
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