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"View Slideshow\n\nIf childhood is when one's aesthetic tendencies take root, then perfumer Fr\u00E9d\u00E9ric Malle and his wife, Marie, were raised on fertile ground. His youth was spent in elegant Paris salons decorated by family friend Victor Grandpierre, the man who gave the Christian Dior couture house its hallmark Louis XVI Revival chic. Hers, on the other hand, included weekends at her parents' famous country house, Ch\u00E2teau de Groussay, which had been spellbindingly restored during World War II by her tastemaking granduncle Charles de Beistegui. So it stands to reason that the Malles' new apartment, on the upper reaches of Fifth Avenue in New York City, might reflect those bountiful influences. Think again.\n\nBeistegui would be delighted to see a mahogany hall bench he designed with architect Emilio Terry standing front and center when the entrance door swings open, its golden CB monogram polished to perfection. The louche sectional sofa by Cassina snaking across the living room, however, would have given the late grandee of Groussay palpitations. \"I never thought I'd buy anything like that, but it's very well designed,\" admits the founder of Editions de Parfums Fr\u00E9d\u00E9ric Malle, a firm that produces cult-sensation scents by the world's leading \"noses.\"\n\nHome to the Malles and their nine-year-old daughter, Jeanne, since 2009 (the couple's other children, Louise, Lucien, and Paul, are at college or boarding school), the spacious apartment is replete with similar pulse-quickening pairings that give it a singularly modern allure. \"I mix furniture like I mix ingredients for perfumes,\" says Fr\u00E9d\u00E9ric, who has olfactory genius in his genes\u2014his grandfather launched Dior's fragrance division. \"Decorating is the same: a matter of balance,\" he continues. \"Objects have different weights, visual or actual. Some are stronger than others in color or shape.\"\n\nWhat has passed muster here amounts to room after room of visual intrigue, combinations that look impossible at first glance but which seem inarguable upon reflection. Eighteenth-century gilt-bronze sconces insouciantly flank a Harry Bertoia bench in the entrance hall, not far from a giant ping-pong ball suspended in midair that turns out to be a boule \u00E9lectromagn\u00E9tique by Greek artist Takis. \"He was one of the heroes of an exhibition at the Grand Palais in 1972,\" Fr\u00E9d\u00E9ric says. \"That show was one of my first real contacts with modern art.\" Alongside a raspberry-red-curtained window with a Central Park view stands a Louis XV secr\u00E9taire en pente partnered with a minimalist Mario Bellini leather chair. In a corner of the living room, a swooping Arco floor lamp by Achille Castiglioni illuminates a huge Italian Renaissance painting framed in glittering gilt wood.\n\nFor the most part, the lady of the house agrees with the strangely felicitous clashes that distinguish le style Malle. \"Fr\u00E9d\u00E9ric is the creative one, but I know what I am comfortable with and what I dislike,\" says Marie, a clinical psychologist and licensed social worker. Her husband adds, laughing, \"And she is very good at letting me know that, often quite strongly.\"\n\nSuffice it to say this cabinet of curiosities has raised eyebrows. \"My father-in-law spent ten days here in November,\" Fr\u00E9d\u00E9ric confides, referring to Johnny de Beistegui, a connoisseur of Old Master paintings and drawings, \"and he was quite surprised by what we have done. It's new territory for him.\" Marie avers, \"It's good for Fr\u00E9d\u00E9ric and me to have our own style, not his parents' style or my parents' style.\" Husband and wife are practically empty nesters by now, a condition that impacts their surroundings. \"The way you live evolves according to what you buy\u2014and according to how many children you have in the apartment,\" Fr\u00E9d\u00E9ric says with a grin.\n\nBefore the Malles could move from their former residence, a triplex on the Upper East Side, superficial adjustments were required. Swiftly jettisoned were the living room's mirrored walls, as well as a faux-Georgian mantel, an ornament Fr\u00E9d\u00E9ric calls \"absolutely horrid.\" Lengths of fussy paneled wainscot were ripped out, too. The couple also requisitioned a maid's room next to the kitchen. Opened up, it is now a breakfast alcove peppered with lithographs by Robert Longo and Roy Lichtenstein as well as an abstract watercolor done by the Malles' daughter Louise when she was five.\n\nThe most impressive of Fr\u00E9d\u00E9ric's alterations is arguably the simplest: After tossing the offending Georgian-style mantel, he bumped out a section of wall in the living room to mimic a substantial chimney-breast, and then fronted it with an antique Louis XVI stone surround. (It's a cosmetic change; the fireplace doesn't actually work.) The replacement mantel isn't as finely carved as one Fr\u00E9d\u00E9ric discovered in Paris and planned to ship across the Atlantic, but designer friend Patrick Naggar, who renovated the perfumer's Madison Avenue shop, urged moderation. \"He told me the chemin\u00E9e I wanted was too nice and would make everything around it look fake,\" Fr\u00E9d\u00E9ric recounts. \"It was very clever advice\u2014to have something good but not so extraordinary that it stands out.\" Young Jeanne should be taking notes; some childhood design lessons are well worth deploying as an adult.\n\nClick here to see Fr\u00E9d\u00E9ric Malle's eclectic Manhattan apartment."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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