“The Residency” is the format that explores the pulse of contemporary leisure, one cultural trend at a time. A moment of reflection on how leisure is no longer pure escape, but a deeper territory of aesthetic, social, and personal transformation.

This episode takes us away from the city, down a quiet road lined with lavender fields, wild grass or half-forgotten memories. It takes us somewhere we may not have been, but instantly recognise. 

Founded by Gaspard Konrad, Velvet House is a growing constellation of rural retreats across France. But calling them simply rentals would miss the point. These are places where leisure becomes personal. Each house feels like the holiday retreat you once dreamed, where every space and object suggest that you’ve been here before.

Set in the forests of Fontainebleau or along the banks of the Seine, the first Velvet Houses sit in deliberate solitude. Nature is your only neighbour. Only the rustle of trees, the sound of your own pace slowing. Where silence isn’t empty, but composed. Where the little moments make a good living.

Velvet House is an invitation to elevate the ordinary. Each space is designed for slow pleasure: the smell of ground coffee in the morning, long aperitifs among the grass, forest walks, cool water refreshing the skin, a recipe scribbled into a shared cookbook. Because the house doesn’t ask for comments or reviews, but for something more personal: to leave a flavour, a memory, on a shared recipe book. Here, living is easy and familiar. And that’s the beauty.  

When you leave, you already know: it’s not a goodbye.

Velvet House turns hospitality into something closer to literature. A quiet page you reread often. The kind of story that unfolds new layers each time you come back.