/INSTAGRAM LINK/
Admittedly, at 36 rue de Bellechasse, ordering a coffee demands a certain focus. Sophie Dries designed Quartz as a small mineral sanctuary, steps from the Musée d’Orsay and deep within her own working neighborhood. Her debut coffee shop thus becomes a natural extension of a long-held obsession: stones, minerals, and the transformative power of raw materials on a space. Pyrite, selenite, and gypsum already haunted her objects; here, quartz claims its place right in the name of the address.
The decor reads like a concise index of her work. Underfoot, a Corten steel floor. Ahead, a polished stainless steel counter with bronze welds, its lines echoing the Octa bar she imagined for the Mobilier National. On the walls, bleached tie-dye curtains soften the metallic, mineral edge, while a new edition of her Styx mirror introduces organic shapes and passamaneria. Even the red bench outside is drawn from her designer lexicon, adapted from her Songye collection.
But Quartz becomes truly fascinating when you begin to read the credits.
Partisan sources the coffee. KOMĀ, in Kyoto, provides the matcha and hojicha. Toutia crafts pastry exclusively for the space, shaping textures that mirror the mineral world—some delicacies resembling fragments of rock more than traditional biscuits. L/Uniform handles the textiles, while Mateo Garcia designed the sound system.
And Sophie Dries pushes this obsession to something entirely invisible: the water.
Before meeting the coffee, it is filtered and remineralized through a system utilizing quartz-bearing dolomite, reintroducing calcium and magnesium to fine-tune its interaction with the extraction process. In other words, at Quartz, even the water has passed the artistic direction casting.
This level of detail finds its perfect purpose on rue de Bellechasse. Quartz was conceived as a meeting point for the creative community of the 7th arrondissement, a neighborhood populated by figures from fashion, art, and design. In a rather delightful touch: the offices of the Sophie Dries agency lie just behind the café. The coffee shop becomes, in essence, the public vestibule of a design studio.
Taste
Rue de Bellechasse · Sophie Dries · KOMĀ Kyoto · Partisan Coffee · Toutia · L/Uniform · Mateo Garcia · Quartz · Corten steel · Polished stainless steel · Bronze welds · Styx mirror · Octa bar · Mobilier National
