At This All-Pink Dream House in France, Everything’s Coming Up Roses
This article originally appeared in the May 2023 issue of Elle Decoration France
No, you are not dreaming: Everything, absolutely everything, in this house is pink! Glazed terra-cotta tiles, walls, terrazzo floors, speakers, switches, electrical outlets, awnings...it’s all there, and it’s pink.
“The idea was to create a monochrome monolith in line with coatings found on the walls of houses in Grasse,” says architect Lucie Niney, who designed the project alongside Thibault Marca, her partner at the firm NeM Architects. “It took us time—many color charts tested in full sun or in pouring rain—to find the right pink, one that stood out but that didn’t create a UFO in the landscape.”
Lancôme’s Fêtiche color can be seen inside and outside the home, paying homage to the famous centifolia rose, a bloom grown in Grasse, France, and the star of Lancôme’s perfume La Vie Est Belle.
When Lancôme purchased the estate in 2020, the centifolia roses were already there, but the land was fallow. Therefore, the entire planting and irrigation of the estate had to be reconsidered (here they practice integrative farming, with no heavy equipment or pesticides), and today these flowers grow better than ever. In fact, more than 10,000 plants bloom in May, followed by rows of iris, lavender, jasmine, fig trees, verbena, rosemary, and other flowers and aromatic herbs that perfume the land for nine months of the year. Local roses form the raw material for Lancôme’s fragrances Mille et une Roses and La Vie Est Belle Domaine de la Rose, which launched last year.
Exterior
“It took more than one try to find the perfect color,” says architect Lucie Niney from the NeM agency. “Because we also have a pink patio in our office in Paris, we logically thought that it would be the right shade for Grasse. Mistake!” With the sun’s exposure in the south of France, it looked almost white.”
Living Room
In addition to a mezzanine and 30-foot ceilings, oversize windows offer paintinglike views of a bamboo grove. The armchairs are by Gerrit Thomas Rietveld for Cassina, and the chandelier is by Konstantin Grcic for Flos.
Living Room
The outline of a rose adorns the outer staircase. Lancôme wanted to invest in decor that would make the scents of La Vie Est Belle and Mille et une Roses come to life. Both of these perfumes are created primarily with the centifolia rose.
Stair
Like a drape, the staircase winds up to lead from a living room to a meeting room with a view of the estate.
Olfactory Lab
Only seasoned perfumers can handle the 350 vials of this custom-made l’orgue à parfum (“perfume organ”) created by NeM with Ateliers Gohard. Visitors will be able to watch demonstrations.
Kitchen and Terrace
Seen from the outside, the monochrome of the house takes on another dimension. Between the blue of the sky and the green of the grass, it looks like a giant piece of bubble gum.
Roof Terrace
By playing with tone-on-tone hues, the table, chairs, and benches on the terrace blend into the decor. It’s hard to imagine that just a few months ago, this looked like an ordinary 1970s building.
“They must be harvested by hand, between 5 and 7 a.m., and processed immediately so they don’t lose their olfactory properties,” explains Lucie Careri, the estate’s manager. “These are haute couture flowers—they’re too precious to be found at the florist!”
The building, meanwhile, also got a face-lift. “It was a building from the 1970s in its original condition,” remembers Niney. “After cleaning up the site by removing barns and sheds, we got down to the main house. Our first mission? An utterly eco-friendly design. Instead of air-conditioning, we used an underground heat exchanger to cool the space, and we insulated the building with lavender straw in the walls and rice straw for the roof. Because of these modifications, the building obtained the Mediterranean Sustainable Building [a sustainability framework for Mediterranean climates].”
“Inside,” Niney continues, “we simplified the volumes as much as possible with, among other moves, cathedral ceilings and a mezzanine in the living room and huge windows in every room to frame nature.” They kept the decor simple, adding furniture from local brands.
Besides being a working farm, the property is also designed to host perfumers and visitors. “The custom l’orgue à parfum [a semicircular piece of furniture used to organize and store raw perfume ingredients] is entirely covered in gold leaf by Ateliers Gohard and was designed so that our perfumers can come to the residence to work on their next fragrances,” adds Careri. With more than 350 vials of the most intoxicating scents, including papyrus, ginger, and Sicilian lemons, they are welcome to let their imaginations run wild.
A limited number of visitors will be able to discover Lancôme’s commitment to local culture and biodiversity (more than 250 different species thrive on the estate) during guided tours. They can discover the pink house, stroll through the lavender fields and allées of fig trees, and take in the iris beds shaded by olive trees before the tour’s highlight—the subterranean perfume distillery. Once there, it’s time to learn everything about the day in the life of a rose: harvesting, extraction, transformation, and the creation of Lancôme’s iconic products.
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