Portrait

In Laszlo Badet's bathroom

For Laszlo Badet, beauty is found in everyday gestures: in the precision of a dish, in the fold of a fabric, in the simple ritual of a bathroom. Chef, artistic director, and former assistant, she transforms every moment into a delicate art form, where self-care, caring for others, and poetry come together. Entering her world is like slipping into a suspended moment, on the border between everyday life and inspiration. Meet this multifaceted artist with a gift for beauty in all its forms.

Tell us all about yourself

“My name is Laszlo. I grew up in Switzerland, where I am originally from, and now live in Paris in the 11th arrondissement. My daily life revolves around various manual trades, but mainly cooking and sewing. Five years ago, I created Cantine Laszlo, a catering service that combines good taste, the creation of fine dining experiences, menus cooked exclusively with seasonal produce, and an artistic eye to create unique moments."

"All of my work today forms, in perfect harmony, an authentic trademark, a style for the simple pleasures in life, with traditional, family-style cuisine, where image and craftsmanship take center stage. Surrounded by a circle of creators, season after season, we enhance increasingly large events: weddings, product launches, consulting, and media support creation. I am passionate about everything that surrounds the art of hospitality."

"Beauty requires immense presence; it requires awareness, gentleness, and clarity. It is a way of inhabiting one's body with tenderness, intelligence, and moderation."

Model, seamstress, chef... How has each of these experiences shaped the way you take care of yourself and your vision of well-being?

"I look for the wonderful in everything," as Remedios Varo said. When I changed careers, it meant leaving not only a place but also a way of working behind me for good. After ten years of permanent employment, I realized with hindsight that the professional ideal to which I had given so much was closing in on me. My superiors, unable to understand my desire to push boundaries, confined me, stigmatized by this large company. I had to turn the page, torn between fear and courage. Wise enough to know myself, I drew on other resources within me to simply continue creating elsewhere. I am a passionate woman. I love rigor, meticulous work, and, above all, the inner beauty of people.

These three professions came one after the other, with one golden rule: never stop my hands from moving, my mind from learning, and my eyes from seeing beautiful things. I never held myself back from being free, from being happy. When I decided to study to become a seamstress instead of going to a prestigious university, when I left Switzerland alone to come to Paris, when I took the plunge without knowing anything about networking, when I created my company Cantine Laszlo... All those times when I took care of myself and my well-being despite my crazy desire to do a lot.

Tell us about your vision of beauty.

“Beauty is a solemn thing, a matter of perspective. It is something we never fully understand. Jean Cocteau said: ‘The beauty of the face is a silent dialogue. My beauty is much more evident in my gestures than in my features. My hands are my most beautiful smile. Having started working at a very young age, shaping the world with my hands, I long believed that I was ahead of my time, as if I gave myself immense freedom day and night to achieve everything I wanted. Then, almost suddenly, as I approached thirty, then thirty-one, then thirty-two, I felt a kind of dull pressure. A society in a hurry was telling me that perhaps I had fallen behind, that I hadn't done certain things, hadn't understood quickly enough, or perhaps had given too much elsewhere.

"This inner beauty that has always guided me has been shaken, almost jeopardized, as if I were no longer in tune with my era, nor with the country where I live, nor with the family I love and am building. It took me time to understand. Time to listen. And I believe that today it has become an integral part of my work: feeling in tune with the beauty I experience, that I create, and above all, reminding myself that I have all the time in the world. There is no such thing as the perfect age or the ideal moment. Don't get caught up in the tension of time, that twist that suddenly makes it less elastic. Only you can set its pace, by trusting yourself in the rightness of life."

What are your bathroom essentials?

“A cream that smells like fresh Swiss mountain herbs. Susanne Kaufmann is the expert. A light, fluid foundation with a good brush, Victoria Beckham has the best choice with her Foundation Drops. A mini eyebrow comb to brush and thicken the hair, I love the one from Ilia: the In Frame Brow Gel. Collagen masks, Collagen PowderCombeau... Without hesitation. La Bonne Brosse brushes!

And then a few other favorites such as:

Brightening Eye Gel Cream Tata Harper
Multi-Corrective Regenerating Cream Firn
Oden Lip Balm
Les Bisou Balm Violette_FR
The Bright Brown Eye Pencil, Oh My Cream Skincare
The Matte Sun Stick, Beauty of Joseon
Legendary Serum Lipstick Legendary Serum Lipstick RMS Beauty"

What about your wellness rituals?

“Getting fresh air, staying warm, walking, even in the rain, eating beautiful, delicious, rich, and diverse foods. Allowing yourself rituals and sometimes breaking them, not worrying about it. Feeling good even when you mess up. My beauty is first and foremost what happens inside me, and then my body becomes its expression. My view of this beauty is less severe than it used to be. For too long I was too harsh, too hard on myself, too mistreated by a world that imposes so much. Today, I consider myself beautiful if everything is going well inside me, if those around me reflect their beauty back to me. I am extremely sensitive to the truth of the world. I don't chase anything, nothing is mysterious when things reveal themselves, I take them as they are."

What role does beauty play in your kitchen?

“It occupies a whole range of different places in my kitchen. This beauty is expressed in the way I set the table, in my taste for creating flower bouquets, in the way I iron and fold napkins, chosen in advance or found in flea markets and kept. There is beauty in choosing certain plates, certain knives, certain glasses, in carefully cleaning utensils, making them shine, restoring their luster. This beauty, that of arranging a set of elements around a table, a buffet, an aperitif, of imagining all kinds of combinations around food or drink, is for me already a primordial beauty, which has no code."

"It can arise from the smallest of things, or from something more substantial and sincere, depending on the situation, the place, or the desire. The beauty of a dish can simply be emphasized by a plate, itself found in a storage room, at a friend's house, or in a vacation home. There is beauty in what we offer, what we serve, the beauty of the entire process that leads to creating a recipe, finding the ingredients, cooking them, and putting it all together. Beauty lies in the care we take to feed someone, which touches on what is most innate in human beings, in relation to their essentials: eating, breathing, moving, sleeping. Beauty in cooking is a quest that says that anything is possible, that beauty can be found wherever we want, described however we want, transformed, thought about."

"I started sewing with vegetables, then I wanted to reflect on my creativity and show it off."

What is the one ingredient in cooking that you could never do without?

“Fruit. When I eat an apple with the skin on, I feel like I look good. I love artichoke tea, and I really like its draining properties. Honey cures all ills, burns, sore throats, sugar cravings, and can be used in natural face masks. Colette said, ‘The scent of a ripe peach is enough to save the day.’”

What inspired you to get into cooking?

“I don't feel like I've gone full-time into cooking. I don't just cook per se, or at least you have to think of cooking in a very broad sense, because I do so many different things in a day. Even though I work in the culinary field, I think about a thousand things that shape it, things that have always been part of me, even before, when I was sewing. I often say that I've simply changed mediums. I don't consider myself a chef today and a seamstress before. I'm just doing something else with my hands."

All of this also happened at a time in my life when I felt trapped, when I felt that my ideas were being stifled and slowed down. I also know that we live in a world that is not doing very well, in a big city where I wanted to express the beauty I see, the beauty I want to convey and elevate. Sometimes I feel that the city I live in, despite its wealth, allows beauty to be lost in certain habits. I need to welcome beauty into my daily life, to create it, to offer it. I am a generous person, and for me, it is important to nurture that aspect of myself. When I travel, I am sometimes surprised to find beauty elsewhere that touches me deeply, beauty that had faded a little in me due to habit. And I don't want to accept that."

Do you have a favorite recipe for the season and for the holidays?

“My favorite recipe for the season is hot chocolate made with Swiss dark chocolate, created with Oh My Cream. What I like to cook for the holidays are simple, everyday dishes, but enhanced by the excellence of the ingredients and a special care taken to bring out their best with little touches. This year, I want to work with fish and bacon, a combination I really love. I also like to offer vegetables for dessert. Pumpkin soup, chocolate cake, beetroot. I like recipes that are good for the body and that have continuity in the way they are developed. For example, cooking poultry one day and then transforming the leftovers into a restorative broth, served differently, with small homemade pasta, ravioli, or a good cheese. I like it when a dish can become a series of ideas, a natural variation. That's what appeals to me."

What emotions do you want to convey through your gourmet creations?

“Beauty. But beauty with the same mindset as Colette: ‘ The simplest things give the same joy as the rarest ones.’”