The Red Garden by Christophe Gautrand for Tanqueray at the Mandarin Oriental

From June 9 to September 16, a brand new conversation between art and mixology is taking place in Paris at the Mandarin Oriental. It’s composed with three major axes – first and foremost at the heart of the Mandarin Oriental, a monumental plant composition custom-made by landscape designer Christophe Gautrand. Called “The Red Garden”, the sculpture echoes out to a brand new cocktail menu for the Bar 8 terrace in the colors of Tanqueray gin. The third axis is a dialogue between the Parisian luxury hotel, Tanqueray’s signature since 1830, and Christophe Gautrand; this is one of the essential stop-offs for Paris Design Week.

By mixing the elegant and avant-garde universe of Tanqueray and the subtlety of shibari – the Japanese art of bondage – Christophe Gautrand composed an installation that fully integrates itself into the Mandarin Oriental’s luxuriant and enchanting garden. “Associating a garden and emotion was for me the challenge of this project of creating a garden within a garden. I sought to play with sensuality by creating an artistic installation, rather than working solely with plants like in a traditional garden,” confides the artist. The result is dreamy, with a tree trunk suspended above the garden’s mirror-like waters with dozens of ropes recalling shibari, an ancestral Japanese martial art that aimed to immobilize samurais. This dialogue is completed as an attentive eye will notice the subtle appearance of elements of the Tanqueray brand on the bark of a plane tree – a very common species in the streets and parks of Paris. Its colored bark is partially covered with pieces of broken bottles.

The occasion was also given to Christophe Gautrand to create a limited edition of Tanqueray #10 bottles, using the same ropes as those used in his vegetal shibari. These same bottles were used to create cocktails that were especially imagined by the Bar 8’s barmen for this pop-up space. Like an extension of the Red Garden, the Tanqueray London Dry Gin and Tanqueray #10 express themselves in a brand new and unique way. This is a way to imagine total immersion of body and mind in a space enriched with a thousand reveries. It’s no surprise to see that the Red Garden is appearing as an essential stop-over for the next edition of Paris Design Week, from September 8th to the 16th.