The Côte d'Azur was the place to be for artists, socialites, writers and the wealthy in the 1920s. Here Coco Chanel built her dream home, La Pausa: a romantic Mediterranean villa, that was bought back by Chanel nearly a decade ago and has since been authentically restored.
Coco discovered this Mediterranean paradise during cruises aboard the "Flying Cloud", the yacht owned by her lover at the time, the Duke of Westminster. While the British aristocrat owned palaces and stately manor homes, Coco wanted a home of her own. She set her sights on a plot of land in the hills above Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, had the house demolished, kept its name, "La Pausa", and entrusted the construction of her ideal villa to a 27-year-old architect who was already up and running: Robert Streitz.
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The architecture is modern, luminous and uncluttered. Coco Chanel had been influenced by the monastic setting of the Aubazine Abbey in Corrèze, the orphanage where she was raised, and she wanted to recreate its atmosphere: thick white walls, an immense stone staircase in the hall, arches, a cloister.... In short, her Provencal home, planted among some two hundred trees, is exquisitely simple. As the Sicilian jeweller Fulco di Verdura joked, "What genius to have spent so much money without it showing! After the war, the fashion designer sold her property to an American couple. The party was over.
The Chanel company, which bought La Pausa ten years ago, called on interior designer Peter Marino to restore it; a beautiful book has been published to celebrate this rebirth. The book is as elegant and understated as Coco Chanel's Mediterranean villa, with a midnight-blue cloth dust jacket, matte paper and pages in a variety of colours, enamelled with archival documents and period photographs in black and white and autochrome. It recreates the decor of the place, as well as the relaxed atmosphere that reigned supreme during Chanel's time.
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An unconventional host, Coco organised her lunches and dinners in the form of buffets, giving her guests greater freedom. A novelty. The only butler allowed in the dining room intervened at the end of meals, so as not to interrupt the lively discussions.
Gabrielle Chanel liked to surround herself with people of spirit, regularly welcoming the ever-faithful poet Pierre Reverdy, painters Christian Bérard and Etienne Drian, Jean Cocteau, choreographer Serge Lifar, goldsmith François Hugo, Lucino Visconti and, of course, Paul Iribe, decorator and illustrator of genius, another of her lovers, who, alas, was struck down by a heart attack after a game of tennis in the villa grounds.
Salvador Dali, a close friend and one-time collaborator, was also a frequent guest and features amongst the prominent figures included in the book. The polymath stayed at La Pausa for several months in 1938; it was a stopover between Spain and the US as he fled the region. "Ultimate days of happiness in Europe". He worked frantically, "clinging to his easel like a real beast", he wrote in a letter to his hostess. The chapter dedicated to him is the most unexpected and moving in the book. The iconic Dali poses next to the masterpieces born here.
The book: "La Pausa, la villa méditerranéenne idéale de Gabrielle Chanel", collective, Flammarion, published September 24.
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