Multi-discinplinary creator, Jackie Kai Ellis, shares the story behind APT La Fayette

Years ago I had written a memoir called The Measure Of My Powers, and in it I described the first time my french tutor had taught me of the French word apte…apt.

“One can have knowledge and one can have skill, but to be truly capable of living it, the understanding must reside in one’s body. Sometimes it is not up to us when we can finally live the lessons we know in our minds; it must reach our heart.”

This conversation occurred many years after I had climbed out of a pale and lonely depression, and much after I had closed my design firm – I had been a creative design director – and decided to go to Paris to study pastry. And it was surely after I had arrived in France and was filled with so much of its beauty that I had begun to come alive again.

In fact, it was around the time I had taken all these new passions and started Beaucoup Bakery – an homage to some of that beauty that had fed me during the years that I was starving for life. Out of gratitude, I built it with a desire to give others exactly what had been given to me, over and over, years ago: a café, a croissant, and a place of inspiration and rest.

When I had heard the word apte, I was running hard, grasping at life’s vitality. I had also started a company called The Paris Tours, doing pastry tours in Paris. Simultaneously, I had begun another of my dreams, exploring the world as a travel & food journalist, and then finally writing a bestselling memoir called The Measure Of My Powers, with Penguin Randomhouse. It scared me to write my story, but at the time, I chose to so that those who saw themselves in my darkest moments could also see themselves in my courageous ones as well.

Then one day, after I had experienced more than I could have possibly imagined, my body began to crave rest before my mind understood. I passed the bakery to the next generation and, with my heart, I bought an apartment in Paris…apt.

As I began renovations, I began unconsciously crafting a home that I was craving myself, one with meaningful beauty. I imbued it with beauty that struck me to my core, one that made me pause, hold my breath in awe…and made me smile. Afterwards, I realized that the place I had created for myself to rest and be inspired, had inadvertently become inspiration for others.

“That the desire for beauty is merely a heightened form of the desire for life”

— OSCAR WILDE

I don’t know everything about beauty, but this is what I have come to believe: that our desire for it is innate and intricately linked with the desire for life. I know that recognizing small moments of beauty helped me to climb out of endlessly dark places, and I know that the more I looked for it, the more of it I saw, and the more I felt beautifully alive.

So here is my genuine desire, to share with you a little beauty: the extravagant kind, and the kind that surrounds us in the everyday. Hopefully it’s a space that shares rejuvenation, inspiration towards creating your own beautiful life.