Category Archives: Provence

Aziyadé

Posted June 11, 2014. Filed in Frédéric Méchiche, Orientalism, Provence

You’ve been blindfolded, escorted by private car to a waiting private plane, where you’ll board with your host for an unknown destination – a surprise gift from your highly imaginative and devilish confidant. In flight you’re allowed to remove the blindfold, take in the appointments of the luxurious cabin, sip champagne and press your host […]

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Provence Pastoral

Posted August 2, 2013. Filed in Jean-Louis Raynaud, Provence, Understated Luxury

The Toujours Provence series comes to a close with Janet de Botton’s extraordinary Provencal bastide and surrounding farmland in Les Baux, the rugged Southwest region of France, oft blogged about since its appearance in Vogue a few years back. Intent on finding a property with views – as opposed to the usual ones protected from […]

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An American in Provence

Posted July 30, 2013. Filed in Dick Dumas, Provence

As we near the close of the Toujours Provence series of posts today we  go back in time to the late American decorator Dick Dumas’ country house, just outside Ménerbes, in Oppède-le-Vieux, Provence. A restaurant when he discovered the property, Dumas converted it to his personal retreat, set in a 12th-century village with views of the […]

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Chez Catroux Provence

Posted July 25, 2013. Filed in François Catroux, Provence, Understated Luxury

Toujours Provence continues, bringing us to Betty and François Catroux’s 16th-century farmhouse, Les Ramades, in the Luberon. Imagine escaping here from Paris, approaching the property through apricot groves to a dead-end road lined with plane trees, where you then enter the intimate and highly stylish world of the Catroux’s. The approach only hints at what’s […]

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Haut Provençal

Posted July 16, 2013. Filed in Jacques Grange, Provence, Understated Luxury

  Our tour of Provençal homes continues with the farmhouse of Terry and Jean de Gunzburg, longtime clients and friends of celebrated French interior designer Jacques Grange. What is particularly unique to this Provencal mas is the balance Grange achieved from bringing together local rustic color and materials with sophisticated art and decor. Grange retained the […]

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Home on the Grange

Posted July 10, 2013. Filed in Jacques Grange, Provence, Understated Luxury

Our tour of some of my favorite homes in Provence continues, following my posts Tourjour Provence, Truex Provence and Chez Cameron. Images of Jacques Grange’s farmhouse, Mas Mireio, have been protected in plastic sheet covers ever since I pulled them from HG magazine years ago, in the late 1980’s. His Provençal vacation home, which is reserved […]

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Chez Cameron

Posted July 8, 2013. Filed in Provence, Rory Cameron, Van Day Truex

Roderick “Rory” Cameron left his idyllic Mediterranean villa, Le Clos, on the French Riviera after downsizing from his mother’s (Lady Kenmare) oft publicized villa, La Fiorentina, in the exclusive enclave of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Soon following his mother’s death he escaped the Riviera due to burgeoning crowds for Ireland with a romantic assumption he would make it […]

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Truex Provence

Posted July 5, 2013. Filed in Provence, Understated Luxury, Van Day Truex

Van Day Truex – once dean of The Parsons School of Design and design director of Tiffany & Co., and friend of Billy Baldwin and teacher to Albert Hadley – epitomized restraint and elegance. Truex is famous for his design directive: “Control, edit and distill”. A distillation of his thoroughly edited approach to classicism was […]

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Toujours Provence

Posted June 26, 2013. Filed in François Catroux, Jacques Grange, Provence, Understated Luxury, Van Day Truex

Summertime in Provence is a feast for the senses – fields of sleep-inducing lavender contrasting the positively sunny disposition of row upon row of sunflowers; the colorful and tempting displays of fruit, vegetables and flowers at village marchés arranged in eye-catching compositions reminiscent of a Cezanne or Van Gogh; aromatic herbs carrying their heady notes […]

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