Les Ensembliers: From humble loft beginnings in Montreal

From a simple loft to building an empire. Today’s design duo has made a mark for themselves in the industry. As owners of Les Ensembliers, they continue to innovate, creating spaces and textiles to inspire.

Fourteen years ago, designer Richard Ouellette and architect Maxime Vandal took the step to move in together. They found a rundown Montreal loft that lacked ambience and decor. And yet, somehow the pair knew they could turn turn it into a home. In the process, they would furthermore develop an eye for design and build their own interior empire.

From humble beginnings

From a simple start the pair launched a life together, and a design juggernaut. Their design firm, Les Ensembliers—named for the French term for interior designer—quickly became a go-to for Montreal’s cosmopolitan clientele. Soon, their reputation extended beyond Quebec’s borders with residential projects from New York to Palm Beach. Last year, they even debuted a collection of fabric, trimmings, and wallpaper for the U.S.-based Brunschwig & Fils. Vandal also now owns a construction company, Gestion Les Ensembliers.

As their careers grew, so did their real estate footprint. After that first loft, they renovated and flipped more than 15 homes before landing in a 5,000-square-foot Victorian in Montreal’s tony Westmount neighbourhood. This space quickly became a showcase for their chic style.

“We’re serial renovators,” says Ouellette. They also bought Humminghill Farm, an 80-acre property in the Eastern Townships region south of Montreal, where they launched a line of vinegars, produce honey, and grow dahlias.

Downsizing

In 2019, Ouellette and Vandal found they were spending most of their time at the farm and decided to downsize in the city. They sold their house and, inspired by their first home together, moved into a loft in Old Montreal. This was a historic enclave dating back to the original 17th-century French settlement. They rented a space in an industrial loft in a 1912 building.

“I fell in love with the large metal windows, the scale and industrial character of the space, and the view of the church and trees in front,” says Ouellette.

When the couple sold their house, they held a massive estate sale and kept only the most “meaningful pieces of our story together”—from a red cocktail table by their friend Anne Midavaine, a third-generation lacquer artist in Paris, to a painting by the late Quebec artist Jean-Paul Riopelle.

They embraced the openness of the loft’s architecture and doubled down on that sense of expansiveness by removing a few walls. They divided the space into zones that would suit their lifestyle. “I knew we wouldn’t be hosting dinners here,” say the designers. “Only cocktails and easy get-togethers.”

With that in mind, the existing kitchen island was removed and swapped for a large conference table from their office that’s now used for food prep. “We only sit at this ‘table’ for drinks when we’re preparing dinner,” Ouellette says.

Textiles and Patterns

One of the biggest challenges was how to highlight their new textile collection, especially with few rooms to cover in wallpaper. They cleverly found ways to showcase the patterns, from pantry doors covered in their painterly, feathered Les Plumes design for a lacquer effect, to a framed section of the Art Deco–inspired Le Tonnerre wallpaper displayed as art in the living area, to their nightstands, which are sheathed in two of the papers, Les Plumes and La Brume, whose atmospheric, gold-touched pattern was given the French name for mist. Meanwhile, everything from floor pillows to armchairs are upholstered in the Brunschwig & Fils Les Ensembliers fabrics.

“In my book, loft living should be artistic and free, uncluttered, collected and easy,” Ouellette says. “For us, it’s like going back to our roots, and that feels romantic to me.”