You almost miss the turn. The lane into La Réserve 1785 is cobblestone, which is already strange for Pererenan, and it does something to you before you even arrive: the scooters and the construction dust fall away, and by the time you reach the door you've somehow crossed into a French garden. A fountain in the middle. Gravel underfoot that crunches in a way tile never does. Herbs planted in the courtyard. Then a huge Renaissance painting against a deep blue wall, marble columns, a wall of books. I know I'm in Bali. Nothing around me is telling me that.
I came to meet the woman behind it, Laure Juhen Vuitton, and I made the mistake of asking one question. Three hours later I was still there, taking notes on a story that started walking to law school in Aix-en-Provence.
The girl watering her plants
"Every morning, I'm just taking the same path," Laure tells me. "And I see a girl every morning, watering her plants. So I say good morning every morning."
The girl was 97 years old. One day she invited Laure in.
"You had to call her Mademoiselle," Laure says. "You could not call her Madame. She would snap you in the face. And I swear, it's real."
Not Madame, because Mademoiselle Henriette Reboul had never married. The reason she carried the name so proudly was something else entirely: she had been a courtesan, in the old sense, the official mistress in a world of kings and artists. "The last courtesan of Provence," Laure says.
Then the story tilts into something almost unbelievable. Henriette had been close with Picasso. Her father traded fabric and perfume between Alexandria and Provence and counted Paul Cézanne among his friends. On one of those first afternoons, over a cup of tea, Laure noticed a small drawing. She turned it over. To my little Henriette, signed Cézanne.
"Today a painting from Cézanne costs hundreds of millions," Laure says. "So imagine, for me, it's a shock. I'm just like, what is this girl?"
She kept stopping by. Every day. "She became my grandmother," Laure says simply. When Henriette passed, Laure inherited the house. And a corridor lined with bottles of wine, each labelled to Mademoiselle Henriette. "Of course, I opened everything."
Why it's called La Réserve, and why 1785
Here's the part that ties Provence to Pererenan. In the 1930s, Henriette met a Dutch governor stationed in Jakarta. He was married. The two of them came to Bali to hide.
"That's why you have La Réserve in Bali," Laure says. "La Réserve, meaning, in French, something you want to keep secret. Something that you love."
And the number? "1785 is the first drawing that I found of her house that I turned into a boutique hotel." That house in Provence is still a hotel today. This one (14 suites tucked into the greenery near Echo Beach, adults only, opened quietly at the end of 2022) is the second telling of the same story.
"I always say I didn't build her building," Laure says. "I'm just paying homage to her. It's my grandmother. This is a temple for her."
The 1,700-drawing obsession
If the story is the soul, the details are the proof. And Laure designed all of them. "When I say everything," she says, "I mean everything." The chandelier: 700 crystals. Every table. Every piece of furniture. Over 1,700 drawings, one by one, over two years, mostly alone.
She tells me about a single decorative frame the way most people tell war stories. In Europe you buy the moldings and assemble them. Not here. "I had to buy four trees," she says. "It's not a joke." Cut into beams, carved, gilded. She flew to Singapore for the right shade of gold because Bali's ran too yellow ("I had to bargain with customs: I need my gold color, sorry"). The finished frame weighs over a ton. One week before opening, the carpenter made it a meter too short. His solution was to cut the painting. Hers was to send him back into the bush for more trees. "This frame is over a ton," she says. "You got four days."
That same week, she broke her leg.
She points at a table nearby, fully concrete, and grins. "If Bali explodes, this table stays. If you have an earthquake, come here. The whole family gets inside." I laugh, but this is the whole ethos in miniature: nothing here is bought, nothing here is casual.
Then it just keeps going, room to room. The recurring pattern climbing the walls is a 1970s Hermès scarf she redesigned so the leaves and branches line up when you stand in exactly the right spot ("everything continues," she says, and it does, I checked). The books were carried back from France in her own luggage during COVID; every single one means something. Whiskey, because Henriette drank whiskey. The red books are from Laure's real French grandmother; the backgammon board from her Syrian one. In the toilets, the first French erotic magazines from the 70s, placed there on purpose: "at the time, the husbands were hiding in the toilet." A vintage stocking brand called Scandal. And the perfume that hangs over the whole house took her six months to build with a perfumer, because she didn't want it to smell like green tea or black tea. "I want, when my guests come, them to remember something." There's a little leather in it.
Even the handwriting on the signage is hers, settled at 4am after trying, she swears, a hundred fonts. "My kids come and tell me, I know this handwriting."
Where France slips into Bali
For all the art de vivre, Laure is adamant this was never meant to be a French maison dropped onto the island. "I wanted to build a French maison breathing in Bali soul," she says. "The elegance of France mixed with the Balinese soul."
You feel the handover as you move through the property. The front is Provence: fountain, gravel, formal garden. The deeper you go, the more the vegetation thickens and the light drops, until it feels, after rain, genuinely like Ubud. The suites carry the names of Henriette's lovers and friends: Gabrielle, for Coco Chanel ("I couldn't write Gabrielle Coco Chanel"); La Chambre d'Édouard, for Edward; Joseph; George. Inside each, the same recipe: one French book, one Balinese object, canopy beds, a writing desk with stationery, and yes, madeleines waiting for you.
The clearest expression of the whole thesis is the pool, which Laure refused to make an infinity pool. Its inspiration is Tirta Empul, the water temple where Balinese come to cleanse. "It's not a pool," she says. "It's somewhere you go and you can meditate, you can wet your head." She redesigned the property's temples too; the Balinese blessings still happen every morning. And the outdoor shower, oddly, is neither French nor Balinese: it's from an African tribe, because Laure grew up in Africa.
That's the thread you keep tugging. The red running through the restaurant and the staircase? Hong Kong, where she once lived. The whole thing is a collage of one very unusual life.
The African chameleon
Because Laure's own biography turns out to be as layered as her hotel. Half French, half Syrian. Born in France, gone by three months old, raised in Chad and Sudan, then Saudi, then Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, moving roughly every two years. She's on her 28th move. Her father calls her "the African chameleon."
Each place, she says, left her a value instead of a souvenir. Africa taught her humility: "you have this connection to nature, it's greater than you." Egypt taught her time, and a distaste for trends: "thousands of years after the pyramids, we still have millions of people coming. I like timeless products." Japan taught her restraint: "what is beautiful is what is not shown." Syria, through her mother, taught her hospitality as something sacred: "the way you welcome, the food, the table, everything matters." First arrival in Bali: 1997. She is, for the record, also a diving instructor, which she offers as another lesson in humility. "You're not a fish. If you're not humble, you die in the water."
What she actually means by luxury
Somewhere between the fruit bowl and the story about buying 1930s Christofle cutlery one antique shop at a time (a year of knocking on doors for a few spoons, her "point zero" for the whole design), Laure gives me the line the whole place is built on.
"For me, luxury is not about giving more, having more," she says. "It's about feeling more."
She's not interested in impressing anyone. She almost didn't put in Wi-Fi. She'd rather you sit in the garden and write a postcard. She's designing those too, and the hotel will mail them for you. "I don't want people to come here to pretend," she says. "Now, time and space are luxury. And not to pretend is luxury."
It would be easy to file all of this under eccentricity, and Laure would be the first to laugh at herself: she calls the obsession a loophole, a spiral, says she needs blinders like a horse. But standing in a room where the clips on the lampshade were hand-painted the right shade of red, where the perfume took six months and the cutlery took a year, "eccentric" isn't the word that lands. The word is homage. Everything here is pointing back at one woman who lived a hundred lives, told by another woman who's lived quite a few herself.
"It's very easy to make a beautiful place," Laure tells me near the end. "It's so difficult to give a soul to a space."
She didn't have that problem. La Réserve has two.
La Réserve 1785 is an adults-only boutique hotel with 14 suites in Pererenan, Canggu, roughly 45 minutes from Ngurah Rai airport and a short walk from Echo Beach. It opened at the end of 2022 and is designed and owned by French architect Laure Juhen Vuitton, who built it over two years alongside collaborators Louis Mariotti and Jean Umani. Expect a Mediterranean-leaning restaurant, a guest-only spa, morning Balinese blessings at the water-temple pool, and a set of villas next door due to open later this year. La Réserve 1785, Pererenan, Bali. lareservebali.com
Frequently Asked Questions
What is La Réserve 1785 in Bali?
La Réserve 1785 is an adults-only boutique hotel with 14 suites in Pererenan, Canggu, a short walk from Echo Beach and about 45 minutes from Ngurah Rai airport. It opened at the end of 2022 and was designed and built by French architect Laure Juhen as a homage to Henriette Reboul, the woman she calls her grandmother.
Who is Laure Juhen?
Laure Juhen is the French-Syrian architect who designed, owns and built La Réserve 1785. Raised across Chad, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Guatemala and Chile, she created the hotel over two years, producing more than 1,700 drawings largely on her own alongside collaborators Louis Mariotti and Jean Umani.
Why is the hotel called La Réserve 1785?
"La Réserve" means something you keep secret and love, echoing how Henriette Reboul once came to Bali to hide with a Dutch governor in the 1930s. The number 1785 refers to the first drawing Laure found of Henriette's house in Provence, which is still a hotel today.
Where is La Réserve 1785 and how do I get there?
The hotel is in Pererenan, Canggu, in the greenery near Echo Beach, roughly 45 minutes from Ngurah Rai (Denpasar) airport. It is an adults-only property, with a set of villas next door due to open later this year.
What makes La Réserve 1785 different from other Bali hotels?
Every detail was designed by Laure Juhen, from a 700-crystal chandelier to a hand-carved gilded frame weighing over a ton and a bespoke perfume that took six months to build. The design blends a French maison with Balinese soul, including a water-temple pool inspired by Tirta Empul and morning Balinese blessings.
