Music meets love in Paris

The door girl is an eight-foot Hindu goddess (a wooden one, sadly). The club is open from 8am to 5am every day. There's yoga, t'ai chi, Reiki healing and massage on tap. If you ever fancied being a hippie in Goa - and you find yourself in Paris's ultra chic Avenue Montaigne - this place will be your Nirvana.

And, in fact, Nirvana is its name. The man behind it is the ultimate hippie-gone-to-Goa - DJ Claude Challe, aka "the jet set's Pied Piper". Often dressed head-to-toe in silver, dripping with earrings and bracelets, or wearing fake-fur leopard-print slippers and a pyjama kaftan in the street, 56-year-old Challe is responsible for Paris's most famous clubs - Les Bains Douches and the Buddha Bar, as well as El Divino in Ibiza. He is also the man behind the first lounge music CD compilations, now ubiquitous.

"This is completely different," Challe says as he shows me around, "an Indian palace for a new psychedelic hippie chick." Nirvana is a two-floor, multi-space club, health club, boutique and hangout combined, with two restaurants and a terrace and garden for outdoor clubbing in summer. Make no mistake, however, Nirvana is for hippie chicks with euros to burn. It's in Paris's ultra-expensive eighth district, around the corner from shops like Valentino, Chanel and Christian Dior; so you can stop off for a pre-clubbing cocktail at the Plaza Athen?e - just like Gwyneth Paltrow, Mick Jagger and Naomi Campbell.

Upstairs, Nirvana has a heartshaped bar (inside of which there's a lava-lamp luminous effect), an allimportant DJ booth, huge purple sofas and video screens. The bazaar-style boutique, La Ganesh, sells CDs, jewellery, books "for the spirit" and accessories for the karma. Downstairs, the dance floor is set with stars. On the night of the soft launch, the place is heaving with French celebs, and Lauren Bacall is turned away at the door - no one recognises her. This will give you some clue about Nirvana's door policy.

The 21 hours-a-day opening times are a USP in themselves. "At 8am we'll serve breakfast," says Challe, in his Maurice Chevalier accent. "It will be a mixture of business people and party people from the night before - when I dance all night, I want to have breakfast. In the afternoon the space is for spirituality: yoga, t'ai chi, lessons for a woman to learn how to massage her man, and for man to massage woman. It will be called Spiri'tea, till 5.30pm. There will be a corner inside for music and talks - from visiting philosophers and so on. At 6pm it's time for apèritifs."

There are two restaurants. "One will be exceptional," Challe continues, "you will never be asked what you want. You sit down and the food will be a fiesta, different every day. It will be expensive [£100/£62 a head], but at only 70 covers, it will always be full. The other chef will have the 'Nirvanettes' - lots of little things, not just Indian, Thai or Maghreb, but Oriental, a mixture of everything." Nirvanettes is a play on the French "dinettes" (little dinners), made up of lots of dishes to share at either £22/£13.50 or £50/£32 a head. So communal, sweetie.

Downstairs has a New Age feel, with aquariums and the starred floor. "You think you are walking in paradise," Challe says. "It's more Zen, because we have new lighting which will change colour every hour. The lounge is like a space party. It's not just dance music - it's cool, flying music, very romantic. People will dance in twos. This is a new generation, they don't realise how nice it is to dance with someone you love in your arms."

The album for the club is already out - Nirvana Lounge, as it's called, is obviously ambient-ethnic.

Indian designer Ritou Beri created the staff uniforms: "Sexy, crazy and easy," according to Challe. The speakers, he claims, are the same quality as those at La Scala in Milan. "The music is more important than anything else," he says. "If you have bad music, you have bad people." Next in his diary, he's creating his own album, book, scent and movie, working with Guy Laliberte from Cirque du Soleil. And yet, despite this business empire, he's been a hippie all his life: "All my life, my vision is music and love ... "

Way to go

Syrie Johnson travelled to Paris on Eurostar (0870 160 6600;www.eurostar.co.uk), returns from £79. She stayed at La Plaza Athenée (00 331 5367 6667), doubles £642 (£396). Nirvana (00 331 4289 6472) opened this month.

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