…It was a time when Claude Nougaro sang “Sur l’écran noir de mes nuits blanches Moi je me fais du cinéma Sans pognon et sans caméra”. On Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, Nougaro was heard less than Grace Jones, who was seen arriving straight from the flight to the Palace stage, dressed and redesigned by Jean-Paul Goude.

A fabulous, sentimental moment, which there was no shortage of. It was between 1978 and 1983, during the heyday of this former theater, which, thanks to the magic touch of Fabrice Emaer, had become a place where Thierry Le Luron, Alice Sapritch, Yves Mourousi among others, had taken us from their Sept on rue Saint Anne to this immense space, a period of carefree beauty born of the mix of genres and atmospheres.

In fact, no one was really into cinema here, apart from nights reinventing the tradition of masked or fancy balls, but everyone, with more or less flamboyant doses of ego, was themselves. Certainly because Jenny Bel’Air and Sylvie Grumbach, depending on the mood of the moment and with an innate – sometimes highly unfair – sense of proportion, could refuse entry to a prominent personality who was furious to see three little beurs slipping smoothly inside. Many were anonymous and many were celebrities, those of the fashion world – Kenzo, Yves Saint-Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, Claude Montana, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac – who crossed paths with Roland Barthes, who was often present, as well as Amanda Lear and other artists.

In the basement, at Le Privilège, decorated by Gérard Garouste by recommendation of Andrée Putman, we dined and bumped into the Palace’s minor stars almost every night: Christian Louboutin, Eva Lonesco and Vincent Darré. Having introduced Robert Mapplethorpe – a regular at Studio 54 in New York – to the spot, and having seen how desirable it was for a connoisseur of parties who later took us back there with Lisa Lyon, I still think to this day that there was an inexplicable magic about the place, for which “La vie en rose” reinterpreted by Grace Jones had become the anthem.

Models and jet-setters, graphic designers, young writers and journalists – starting with Alain Pacadis, who had made it “his” go-to and reserved a special place for it in his column in Libération – recounted it all much better than I could. They also listed all the people who “counted” in Paris at the time and who used to meet there. Numerous photographers have created a memory of these Palace years, as they must be called. These years, which were first and foremost nights, and which could sometimes take us directly from this immense nocturnal ship to the office for the morning editorial conference, have been amply photographed. Although, they were mostly – and sometimes very well – photographed in black and white. It’s deemed that it’s not without a certain nostalgia that we revisit some of these images today, some of these familiar faces, now lost to sight for some, and vanished for too many…

Excerpt from the preface for the book FÊTE AU PALACE Éditions CDP 2022

by ALAIN PACADIs

In 1978, Fabrice Emaer had the idea of ​​opening the biggest club in Europe on rue du Faubourg Montmartre, little did we know that our lives were about to take a new turn.

The first years of Le Palace saw a series of Baroque festivities, with a debauchery of music, fun and sumptuous costumes, that would remain like diamonds illuminating the crowns of the princes of the night.

From Karl Lagerfeld’s Venetian parties to Paloma Picasso’s wedding, Le Palace became the preferred meeting place for jet-setters, but it was also a place where young people from the suburbs could meet, attracted by so much glitz and glitter. It was a prestigious showcase decorated by Gérard Garouste, the greatest post-modern painter, where trends followed one another at an infernal pace: Punk and After-Punk, New Romanticism, Cold Wave, Nouveau Thermidorien, Novö, Post-Modern, After Junk, etc. The great couturiers came, accompanied by models wearing the most extravagant dresses in the collection, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Stars strolled between  concerts, stars watched themselves live, and spied on by scoop-hungry photographers.

For years, under the multicolored lasers, one costume ball followed another: a mustachioed marquise danced with a gypsy stoned on poppers, macho-men bodybuilders rubbed shoulders with people from transgender communities, preppy people in tuxedos mingled with punks; Le Palace was an extraordinary melting pot where, at night, absolutely anything could happen. The club debuted at a pivotal moment: after the babas or leftist wanderings, at the height of the punk explosion, at a time when the youth were rediscovering pleasure and fun. We drank refined cocktails until dawn, dancing to hellish rhythms. Every evening, we’d find a new dance or trend. In this temple of aesthetics, diva makeup flowed over the hairy torsos of newly liberated gays. One day a week, it was the blacks who invaded the dance floor of this modern Harlem, and another, it was the gays. After Fabrice Emaer’s death, the Palace didn’t stop, and new management continues to keep the party going, but I’ll always be nostalgic for that period when we were just learning how to party.

At the time, Arnaud Baumann haunted the nights of the Palace, armed with a camera.

He took snapshots that blended poetry and aesthetics, not focusing on the stars like the others, but seeing the nightclub as a place inhabited by all walks of life. He took all series of photos with immense passion, but once they were finished, he had no desire to show his work. Now that they’ve aged and matured like fine wine, it’s time to take them out of the boxes and put them on display. It was truly a remarkable era.