La Pausa: A Chanel Icon

Coco Chanel, an independent and innovative woman among her contemporaries, had a habit of spending her vacations in the Southeast of France, on her lover the distinguished Duke of Westminster’s yacht. In the late 20s, the object of her affection brought his lover to a piece of land above the town of Menton, offering a panoramic view over the bay. An ancient piece of land belonging to the Grimaldi family of Monaco, this five acre surface would charm Gabrielle Chanel with its savage rows of olive and orange trees. To create what she wanted to be the perfect representation of “the ideal Mediterranean villa”, she called on a young architect in his 20s. Robert Streitz, recruited upon the suggestion of her friend Comte Jean de Ségonzac, took on a construction site then valued a t 1,800,000 francs, a colossal sum for those days. He created a Provence-style villa with a series of arches inspired by d’Aubazine, the ancient abbey transformed into an orphanage that once housed the Mademoiselle herself in her adolescent years. On the vaulted brick ceilings, marked by the Duke’s coat of arms, there also appears a regular motif of five windows on each façade, an hommage to Chanel’s successful perfume N°5. 1,000 inhabitable square meters spread out over five stories, complete with seven bedrooms, three living rooms, a dining room, two kitchens, and servants’ quarters. Accompanied by two more modest villas reserved for guests, the property was surrounded by a Provence-style garden designed in accordance with directives from this woman with novel tastes indeed. 30 Antibes olive trees were planted, and Gabrielle grew regional plants like lavender and romarin which were previously deemed “too ordinary”.

With a passion for these new quarters entirely built to her taste, Coco would come down once a month from Paris to inspect the progress of construction; when she couldn’t make the journey, she would bring one of the artisans up to Paris to brief her. She decided to name this new house “La Pausa” as an hommage to a legend in which Mary Magdalene was said to have taken a rest in that very spot on her way to Jerusalem. The mistress of the house would then decorate the interiors with the help of her friend Stéphane Boudin, then President of Maison Jansen. She would bring a breath of fresh air and modernity, choosing noble materials and pure tones like white and beige. With an astonishing restraint, Gabrielle Chanel was able to turn her villa into a new representation of good taste: in a 1930 issue of Vogue, the house was praised as manifesting “the essence of simplicity” along with “nothing being superfluous”. No less than 20,000 handmade tiles were ordered for rooftops, the most gorgeous of 16th century oak furniture from England adorned the rooms and suites, and grandiose Spanish chandeliers created a style located somewhere between Provence and the Iberian coast for this new villa. The casual and informal atmosphere would soon cause a sensation. La Pausa was described by Vogue in 1935 as being “one of the most enchanting villas that has ever materialized on the coasts of the Mediterranean”. It undeniably became a bastion of a fresh and pure luxury. In the end, history would have it that the final sum for the project reached somewhere around 6,000,000 francs…

In 1933, the Mademoiselle ended her relationship with the Duke, never having accepted his wife from a third marriage. “There are a lot of duchesses, but only one Coco Chanel,” he is said to have mused. The villa became a successive and uninterrupted guest house: after the Duke of Westminster, her new lover Paul Iribe would come to spend several summers. He died tragically in 1935 during a tennis match on the courts of La Pausa. Chanel would also throw fantastic parties where everyone was free to wander among the buffet to taste anything they liked. Each in turn, eminent artists such as Jean Cocteau, Serge Lifar, Pierre Reverdy, Pablo Picasso, Luchino Visconti, or her Texan friend Misia Sert would come to take advantage of the Mediterranean sun in this haven of peace. In 1938, Gala and Salvador Dali would take up quarters for four months, leaving a number of photographs in their wake. Another renowned guest would maintain particular fond memories of his time spent in Chanel-land: Winston Churchill. Between 1953 and 1954, the year of the Duke of Westminster’s decease, the Mademoiselle stated she no longer wished to spend time at La Pausa and decided thus to sell her villa. It was the former British Prime Minister who would find a number of buyers for the property, making Emery Reves, a Hungarian publisher and author that worked for him, the new owner.

Emery Reves and his wife Wendy, a former American model and another woman of character, would turn La Pausa into their summer home. Changing a part of the layout without really touching the furniture, the couple continued to use the spot as a getaway for their famous friends. Churchill would continue to vacation at La Pausa, sometimes spending up to 1/3rd of the year there: he would himself nickname this place “Pausaland”, making him seem “20 years younger”. He would write part of his novel History of the English Peoples there. Greta Garbo, Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco, and Jackie Onassis would all honor La Pausa with their presence as well. To set herself apart from the indelible presence of the property’s former owner, Wendy Reves turned the house into a veritable temple of the arts: asking her servants to “cut it out with Chanel”, contemporary theorists such as Olivier Meslay can’t help but remark that “Reves is the body and Chanel the skeleton” of the villa. The Reves period in La Pausa was thus marked by a taste for the arts, assembling a collection of 40,000 works of art including 300 pieces of Chinese porcelain, impressive paintings by Cézanne, Monet, Gauguin, Renoir, Van Gogh, and Degas, a drum set made of 50 silver objects, and several Persian tapestries. Upon Emery’s death in 1981, his wife would donate it all to the Dallas Museum of Art in exchange for a retrospective on the villa: five of La Pausa’s rooms were identically reconstructed at the museum. In 2007, Wendy Reves decided to resell La Pausa after spending 53 years of her life there. In that same year, Chanel would release an exclusive perfume in honor of their founder’s personal villa: “N°28 La Pausa”, referring to the year in which Mademoiselle acquired the property with the number 28 as well as with its lavender scents. After years of vacancy, La Pausa, an emblematic house for a part of Coco Chanel’s life, was bought up by the couture house that she founded.