A Creative Life in a Château in South-west France

I’m originally from Paris but I grew up in Hyères. I’ve been living in the South West since I was 12, firstly in Landes and now in Bèarn. This is where I raised my children, Jules, who’s 12, and Paul, who’s 9, and it’s where the three of us now live. We have our house here, which, for us, is a place where we relax and recharge our batteries, spend time reading, and make all kinds of objects from wood, cardboard and various materials we find here and there, and where we also play the piano. Recently, we’ve been spending more and more time here, in what will be the future workshops of my two brands, Georges and Soma. It’s like a family home. We’ve brought all our favourite little objects and items!

This is the chateau of the village, Méritein, which lies on the road to Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle. It’s here that we’ll soon have our production teams and our showroom. It’s a large building formerly occupied by two aromatherapist sisters, and it’s imbued with an atmosphere of both tranquillity (due, in particular to the large gardens) and a certain craziness (each floor is made up of a succession of rooms and long corridors; it’s quite unsettling at first). We’ve nevertheless made ourselves almost completely at home in it, me and my children, while the work has been underway. We spend every weekend here! In fact, we’ll eventually always have our own “wing” here so we can enjoy the gardens, which we’ll soon be converting into a healing and aromatherapy space. I wanted Jules and Paul to be part of this cultural undertaking! I wanted a place that would form a natural link between my family and my team. This building was perfect. I didn’t want a “practical” workplace but instead a country house where everyone feels happy and at ease, where we can all get together around a table.

It’s now 10 years since I created Georges. Ten years of design based around textures and colours I’ve fallen immediately in love with. Ten years of prototyping and meetings with artisans from here and increasingly local sourcing of materials. I’ve discovered incredible ways of doing things: growing raw materials close at hand, initiatives in our region that I simply could not pass up. Soma is the fruit of this research – or of these finds rather. Like a sort of homage to our local lands and soil. Because often, when you visit the other side of the world, you find yourself amazed at the wonderfully skilled hands of certain artisans. Soma is the opposite of this approach. I visited my neighbours. Shepherds, weavers, organically sourced and biodegradable surfboard makers, basket makers, boilermakers, cabinetmakers… and found the same precious skills and know-how, the same beauty in the gestures and movements, the same kind of working with fibres. I therefore took the time to put together a complete collection of pieces, all developed over a period of months and numbered and signed. Soma adds to and extends the range of items created for Georges. Every year, we will present our vision of one of the rooms of a house: for 2020, it’s the dining room, based around a glossy table and an assortment of fine, precious materials. For 2021, the lounge. The idea being to have a collection that’s as complete and accomplished as possible, thought out entirely from start to finish, from the smallest item to the central furniture piece.

I grew up surrounded by it, quite simply! And it seems to me that in each generation of both sides of my family, everybody has created things. One of my great-grandfathers designed outfits for women in small notebooks when he was at the front during the war. He knew how to recane chairs and also did basket-making. One of my other great-grandfathers was a bootmaker: he made shoes for the cabaret singers of the era, such as Mistinguett for example. There’s a whole section of my family involved in jewellery. My grandmother was an upholsterer. And finally, I grew up with parents who new how to renovate a house from top to bottom, from the framework to the masonry, from the plumbing to laying the wooden floors… With around a dozen renovations taking place during my childhood, I learned to recognise good quality materials and make things.

I grew up in the South West, in Hyères, in the shadow of the strikingly unusual and almost extraterrestrial Villa Noailles. I found that building fascinating. But I think my inspirations also come from my parents’ wanderlust and thirst for discovery. As well as the presence of the sea, the coves of Giens and the smell of the heaths, which were essential for us, we were always out of the house every weekend. The Camargue, Marseille, the Haut Var region and the country houses in Sainte-Baume, Vallauris, Italy and Liguria. It all seemed magical to me. I was mad about architecture, floor tiles, whitewashed facades and warm, earthy colours, and also that raw bright light that’s unique to the South. Then my father took me to see a potter he subsequently ended up working with for a long time… I must have been about eight or nine. And I was captivated by the object, by the hand that fashioned it, combining both slowness and brusque deliberateness at the same time, and the odour of the clay and that so incredible workshop. I still carry that inside me I think.