The wild parties of Les Bains Douches, the most famous disco-bathroom in the world, are back

There will be those who do not remember it, but in the eighties the beautiful people He was traveling on the Concorde, a supersonic plane that traveled the distance between New York and Paris in three hours and twenty minutes. His regulars would catch a flight at JFK to have dinner in Paris, and then hang out at Les Bains Douches until six in the morning. On the return flight, 30% of those who had danced on that floor were there, and the party continued. Two days later they went to Studio 54 and there they were again. Entering Les Bains Douches and Studio 54 was like touching heaven. Concorde through.

Then Jean-Pierre Marois, founder of today's Les Bains, was 15 years old. In the seventies his father, Maurice Marois, a professor at the Paris School of Medicine, bought a Haussmannian building in the heart of the third arrondissement. He had acquired it as an investment without being very clear about what to do with it. The property had a strange layout, a basement with a swimming pool, a hammam, many rooms, too many corridors… and it vibrated with energy. In the 19th century it had been the famous Les Bains Guerbois bathhouse and the Batignolles group had ended up taking the waters there: Cézanne, Renoir, Zola, Degas and Monet. Marcel Proust also used to be seen. It was a place frequented by creative, unprejudiced and free people. As it was the only building on the street with electric lights, it could be seen in the distance. Today, two street lamps always remain on next to the bronze caryatids at the entrance to remember that fragile and insinuating light at the end of the 19th century.

Jean-Pierre still can't explain how two guys in their twenties, Jacques Renault and Fabrice Coat, convinced the classic Histology professor to rent them the premises to set up a night business, instead of accepting another, more prestigious offer: Jacques Maisonrouge, then global vice president of IBM, wanted to turn the bathrooms into a computer store. The boys stood guard to sell their project to the professor, who is not sure why he felt more seduced by a nightclub project than by a store. A nightclub that the professor never visited, but his son did. Often, passion and pride. In short, his father was in a way the architect of that wonder. Jacques and Fabrice called a third friend, Pierre Benaim, who in turn brought a young Philippe Starck who accepted the challenge of converting the baths into a late 20th century venue. He put up neon, placed a monitor to refract his images in mirrors and installed a cage that ran along the walls: inside wandered a rat that, according to Vanity Fairdied a few days later from a cocaine overdose.

Les Bains Douches opened on December 21, 1978. Very soon the basement revealed itself to be the soul of the party, there Starck had preserved the swimming pool and at its bottom he had arranged a chess board whose pieces were moved by a frogman, following the crazy orders from the players. Additionally, he opened a hole in the tile wall to consume pornography. Legendary punk and punk bands new wave like Joy Division and Dead Kennedys began to appear in that basement of Le Marais. “Those kids were very well connected to the music scene of the time. The best bands stopped at Les Bains Douches: Simple Minds, Depeche Mode and REM played down here in front of 300 people and years later they filled stadiums,” says Jean-Pierre, who firmly believes that this building has been a magnet for talents who would later make a great race. David Guetta was a resident DJ.

Jean-Pierre remembers running away from home at the age of 15 to enter Les Bains Douches. “It took 20 minutes, when he arrived, the line went around the street. At the door, one of the most feared characters of the Parisian night, Marie-Line, the club's blonde and powerful bouncer, managed the list. The order was rich or poor, young or old, famous or unknown, but never ordinary.” Her judgment was final. The most feared phrase in Paris was: “I'm sorry, it won't be possible tonight.” “He selected his clientele like a painter his color palette,” recalls Jean-Pierre. Marie-Line could reject the most beautiful girl for wearing the wrong earrings. Among those rejected: Catherine Deneuve and Keith Richards.

“Les Bains Douches opened my eyes, I came from a very classical background and suddenly I cut my hair in style. rockabilly and I changed all my clothes. I remember walking in, looking to the right and seeing Mick Jagger with Jerry Hall, looking to the left and seeing Iman and David Bowie. Seeing John Galliano and Thierry Mugler on one table and Robert De Niro and Roman Polanski on the other,” says Marois.

The lights went out, the dance floor went up and anything was possible: a kid from the suburbs could spend the entire night dancing with a famous actress, a superstar could improvise a concert—it happened in 1979 with Joy Division and in 1992 with Prince.

Cell phones did not exist and only very select photographers entered. The mythology of the place was more oral than graphic. There are those who swear they saw John Galliano standing on a table attesting that he was not wearing anything under his kilt, all this before throwing an ice cube at the head of Michael Hutchence, singer of INXS.

“At Les Bains Douches you had the feeling of entering a big private party, a family gathering with real stars who felt in a safe place and sooner or later they let loose,” remembers Jean-Pierre, who between dinners and private concerts He saw even his most extravagant fantasies come true there.

When the building was closed in 2010 due to the risk of collapse, the filmmaker, who had made his career in Los Angeles, did not have the heart to write off the place. “I remember walking thr
ough the basement and the rooms and feeling a very heavy silence. For the first time in 140 years this building was empty.”

After a long and complicated renovation and after ignoring the snobbish refrain of his friends in Paris — “this place is dead, that era has passed, you are going to waste time and money” —, Jean-Pierre announced in 2015 the return of Les Bains like a five star hotel. In the new Les Bains there would no longer be a need to sleep on the sofas, as 39 luxury suites would be available to spend the hangover from the live concerts that would continue to be held every week. In addition, a modern spa would be installed in what was the most legendary basement in Paris.

Marois called on the best for the third revival of Les Bains: Vincent Bastie to renovate the building and Tristan Auer for an interior design that preserves the imprint of the young Philippe Starck and gracefully harmonizes the styles of several centuries, from a 19th century washbasin to a dystopian shower of the 21st. Les Bains Guerbois, the boutique reached across the street, reproduces the magic of those nights in round perfumes signed by the best noses in the world: 1992 Purple Night smells like Prince's secret concert; 1900 Proust's L'Heure imagines the fumes from the writer's steam bath before drinking tea; and 1986 Éclectique celebrates the casting that Marie-Line did to choose those who would enter the most desired tribe in Paris for one night.

In the spring of 2024, Jean-Pierre takes stock of his daring. The chaos in Les Bains may no longer be the same, but extraordinary things continue to happen. In 2016 the Eagles of Death Metal returned to Paris to finish the concert interrupted at the Bataclan venue by the terrorist attack the previous year. When they left the Olympia they went to Les Bains, Jean-Pierre opened the club for them, they connected the phone to the sound system and about 25 people, including survivors and relatives, stayed there until dawn. It was never known. Rick Owens stayed three months in the new Les Bains, Nicolas Ghesquière nine. Bobby Brown came in passing and stayed three weeks. Jacquemus celebrated his birthday party last year. For whatever reason, hardly any photos of all this have been seen.

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