< PreviousAristocrat, tastemaker, artistic director… the multi-talented Cordélia de Castellane has turned her hand to interior design at the most delicious new restaurant in Paris - STYLE ICON - In the best possible taste AD_040_44-47_Radar_Style Icon Cordelia_11749951.indd 4425/08/2021 10:31:52 AMThe richly layered interiors of Café Laperouse feature foliage-festooned vintage chandeliers and a panoply of textile prints. OPPOSITE PAGE: Cordélia de Castellane pictured at her country home in L’Oise. AD_040_44-47_Radar_Style Icon Cordelia_11749951.indd 4525/08/2021 10:32:06 AM46 CLOCKWISE FROM RIGHT: The elegant facade of the Hôtel de la Marine; Café Laperouse has outdoor tables in the arcade overlooking Place de la Concorde; teatime treats served on monogrammed crockery. OPPOSITE PAGE: A striped, tented ceiling, botanical wallpaper and a shell-encrusted bar add to the fantastical feel. - STYLE ICON - As the artistic director of both Dior Maison and Baby Dior, as well as being the mother of four children and a creator of beautiful homes, only the most delicious of projects can entice Cordélia de Castellane to do a little moonlighting. But a proposal to design her fi rst restaurant turned out to be just the right kind of tit-bit. De Castellane, a former model and now a renowned French tastemaker, hail- ing from one of the most bohemian and aris- tocratic families in France, has turned her design eye to Café Laperouse, a destination sure to be on the wish-list of every stylish trav- eller this autumn. Recently opened in the newly renovated Hôtel de la Marine on Paris’s prestigious Place de la Concorde, it is a spin-off of the famous Lapérouse restaurant, which dates back to 1766. The original restaurant was renovated in 2019 by MOMA group, which is backed by Antoine Arnault of the luxury conglomerate LVMH. Named after Jean-François de Lapérouse, a 19th-century explorer and offi - cer in the French Royal Navy, his story caught De Castellane’s imagination and she has turned the café into a maritime-inspired retreat, with all the luxury and romance one would wish for in a Parisian retreat in such a historic setting. “For coff ee in Paris you want to have some- thing quite cosy,” de Castellane says on a call from the French capital. “So, fi rst of all I want- ed to create a place where people feel they want to spend time. That’s the most import- ant thing. And then also to see something that AD_040_44-47_Radar_Style Icon Cordelia_11749951.indd 4625/08/2021 10:32:15 AMyou don’t see everywhere. I wanted people to feel surprised.” A bar made from sea-shells? A striped cano- pied ceiling inspired by Josephine Napoléon? Trailing green plants snaking out of vintage Baccarat chandeliers sourced from fl ea mar- kets all over Paris? That will do it. Designing all the fabrics and wallcoverings herself, De Castellane has piled on cobalt blue nautical print upholstery for seating and a botanical printed and hand-painted wallpaper to evoke – along with the shell-adorned bar by the art- ist Thomas Boog and sea shell-shaped bar stools and chairs by Fleur de Gallard – the sensation of a foaming sea. Turned wood and rattan furniture summon the feeling of a boat navigating its way through the ocean. The ceramic wall light fi xtures by L’Atelier Jean Roger are in the form of birds and fi sh. The lush greenery in the lighting and small trees in pots both inside and outside on the café’s two sheltered terraces, designed by the landscape gardener, Milan Hajsinek, magic up the ver- dant landscape of the Pacifi c Islands that de Castellane imagines Lapérouse would have seen from aboard his ship. “It is a bit boat, it is a bit Parisian living room, it is a jungle,” she says. “It is a journey for the guests.” The initial space is large with high ceilings, so her fi rst move was to divide it, making a smaller dining room in a palette of dusky pinks and red behind the main room ‘like a boudoir’, which echoes the famous private rooms of the original Lapérouse. The height in the main salon was softened with a canopy inspired by Josephine Napoleon’s bedroom at her home, Malmaison. “A restaurant is not a home but I wanted to make it very like home and very personal, full of details,” says de Castellane. “At night it is beautiful. We put the chandeliers on very low for a little yellow glow and then suddenly we can see Paris with the Concorde obelisk and the Eiff el Tower.” Aside from her work at Dior, de Castellane is well known for the beautiful family homes she has created and for being something of a super-hostess, although she tells me she doesn’t like to entertain on a large scale. “I don’t throw big parties, I don’t go to big par- ties. You know I was working at 16 so I used to do a lot of that. But now maybe I feel a bit grumpy,” she jokes, “because yes, I’m only 40 years old but my eldest son is 21.” She instead likes to create small special occasions for those close to her. “I love to do small dinners for ten friends and cook myself, but it’s only for the people that I know and love.” A book about de Castellane’s astonishingly pretty country house in L’Oise, north of Paris, will be published by Rizzoli in September. She has decorated it with her singularly artistic PHOTOGR APHY FR ANÇOI S COQU E R E L ; MA T T H IE U S A LV AI NG I have plates that are clashing or mismatched chairs. It doesn’t matter. I don’t like perfec- tion, in people or in anything. I like mistakes, I like accidents. Perfection is boring.” Her mother, she says, continues to inspire her: “She taught me not to be afraid to have your own ideas. When I started Lapérous I said to her, “Is it too much?” And she said, ‘Don’t do it half way. You do it your way or you don’t do it.’ And she’s right.” With her time precious, Place de la Concorde is the only venue she will design in the chain of upmarket outposts planned for Lapérouse. ‘‘It’s really exceptional that I do something outside Dior but I’m very happy to do few projects like this, if I can make them personal with research,” says de Castellane. “Some people have said, ‘ah, you’re a decorator now’, but I’m not. It would be pretentious of me to say so. I have just used my imagination.” @cafelaperouseparis – KATE FINNIGAN eye, mixing fl ea market fi nds with family heir- looms, against a background of vivid pat- tern-on-pattern and colour. She learnt to dec- orate this way from her mother, Atalanta, herself an interior decorator. “She has a bril- liant eye and she brought me to the fl ea mar- kets when I was a very young girl. Somehow on both sides of my family they’re all a bit arty.” (A ‘bit arty’ is an understatement - her fi rst cousin, Victoire de Castellane, is the cele- brated creative director of Dior Joaillerie.) “We do a lot of things with our hands our- selves. I can paint, I can print my own wallpa- per, I sometimes make curtains. But what is most important to me is that a room needs to look like you, to look like your soul.” The house then gives a very good impres- sion of her soul. “I wanted to put in all my things from my grandmother and family, pieces I found at the fl ea market or souvenirs I picked up on trips,” she explains. “Very often AD_040_44-47_Radar_Style Icon Cordelia_11749951.indd 4725/08/2021 10:32:32 AMADMIDDLEEASTADMIDDLEEASTADMIDDLEEASTARCHITECTURAL DIGEST MIDDLE EAST AD Middle East magazine issues are available at the Apple and Google Play App stores THE PREMIER DESTINATION FOR DESIGN INSPIRATION admiddleeast.com49 ARENA PHOTO : PRU E RUSCOE 84 “I grew up in the desert. When I looked out of the window, soft brown shades reigned for miles. My imagination became an oasis” AD_040_49_Arena_Opener_11730201.indd 4925/08/2021 10:33:16 AM50 Words Graham Wood Photography Elsa Young DOWN TO EARTH An architect’s weekend getaway on an ancient geological site in South Africa reprises traditional building techniques using soil and stone to create a sleek, sustainable house AD_040_50-59_Arena_South Africa_11730073.indd 5025/08/2021 12:21:22 PMOpting for built-in furniture helped lower the carbon footprint of the house. The wall art by Chris Soal was made from thousands of toothpicks. AD_040_50-59_Arena_South Africa_11730073.indd 5125/08/2021 12:21:30 PM52 RCHITEC T XA VIER HUYBERECHT S HA S A W ONDERFULLY POETIC W AY of describing the way he designed the weekend retreat that he and his brother, Damien, built on their farm south of Johannesburg. He says that he wanted to “gently lift the carpet at the bottom of the hill and slide the house underneath”. And that is exactly what he has done. A green roof runs seamlessly from the hillside and over the house, like a blanket of earth. The house is almost invisible from many angles, disappearing into the landscape. Made almost entirely from soil and stone, the way it has been designed and built means that it can and will, at the end of its life, disintegrate and become reabsorbed into the ground. The farm Xavier and Damien found, after a long search, is located in the ancient Vredefort Dome, the oldest and biggest meteorite impact site on the planet. It’s over 2,000 million years old and carries the memory of a critical event that resulted in momentous climate changes (as good a prompt as any to build sustainably). Xavier runs an architectural practice in Johannesburg that is known for pioneering sustainable architecture. The signifi cance of the site and the opportunity to be his own client inspired him to take “green” architecture to another level. So, with Damien taking on the role of building contractor, they set about creating an eco house using stacked stone, rammed earth, handmade compacted earth bricks and earth bags. But this is no Hobbit hole. Beneath that green roof is a clean-lined, low-slung modernist-inspired villa. It has lofty volumes and massive, fl oor-to-ceiling glass doors that slide away into wall cavities and open the house completely to the surrounding landscape. The duo positioned the house carefully, so that it is nestled among trees and shrubs, some of them obscuring the view. “A lot of people ask us why we kept the trees in front of the house,” says Xavier. “We wanted it to be hidden, so that there would be a natural separation between the animals roaming the plains and the interior.” In fact, it’s impossible to take in the whole house at once (unless, perhaps, you happen to fl y by). Rather than a “long fl at façade” of glass facing the view, Xavier and Damien have broken down the front of the house into a series of blocks, which makes it appear much smaller than it is. This approach sensitively knits the house into its surroundings rather than perching it on top. “We didn’t want to impose on the landscape,” Xavier adds. A From above, the house almost disappears into the landscape around Vredefort Dome, the World’s oldest and largest meteor impact site. AD_040_50-59_Arena_South Africa_11730073.indd 5225/08/2021 12:21:41 PM“We designed and built the table ourselves,” says Xavier. The chairs are a mix of Seventies vintage pieces which have been reupholstered in the same fabric. AD_040_50-59_Arena_South Africa_11730073.indd 5325/08/2021 12:21:59 PMNext >