In 1928, Coco Chanel designed La Pausa with Belgian architect Robert Streitz, who was 27 at the time. Peter Marino has restored the villa, now at the center of Matthieu Blazy's first spring campaign for Chanel. Models move through its rooms and staircases, while Alec Soth's photographs link Chanel's original world with the present.
Marino restored the property without turning it into a museum piece. He studied hundreds of archival photographs before rebuilding the house's visual language. The work covered the interiors, furniture, layout and gardens, aiming to recapture the feeling of the 1930s rather than create a polished replica.
Coco Chanel sold La Pausa in 1953, and the Chanel fashion house bought the villa back in 2015, returning the property to the brand after decades outside its control.
La Pausa was more than a fashionable address. Chanel imagined a Mediterranean ideal, with restrained rooms and wide views over the pale blue bay. Zadovoljna Nova reports that the design also drew on her childhood memories of Aubazine Abbey.
The land shaped the house. Two hundred and fifty olive trees surround the property. The sea, green groves, southern light and untamed field define its setting. Pale colours, clean lines and abundant light give the villa a quiet style inspired by Palladian principles.
La Pausa reopened in June 2025 as a private residence and a setting for cultural and creative programmes, not a hotel or ticketed museum. Its renewed role keeps the villa in use while preserving the atmosphere of Chanel’s former home, Zadovoljna Nova reports.
The broad stone staircase echoes the one at Aubazine Abbey, where Chanel spent part of her childhood. A suggested cloister surrounds the inner courtyard. Stone arches, dark solid-wood furniture, and Spanish and Persian rugs soften the brilliant white walls.
Marino added modern plumbing, ventilation and electrical systems, keeping them almost invisible. In the bedroom, he restored two large Baroque mirrors beside the wrought-iron bed. Venetian-style curtains and a bright star complete the bed. The mirrored bathroom and dressing table, filled with creams, lotions and perfumes, were also recreated with close attention to the original atmosphere.
La Pausa's garden is part of the house's story. Dry-stone walls frame cypresses, lavender, jasmine and twisted olive trees. Cushions, hammocks and swings create places to pause across the estate. During Chanel's time, the property hosted tennis, dancing, dinners and celebrations with artists and friends such as Salvador Dalí, Luchino Visconti and Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. AD Magazine describes the villa as both a private retreat and a meeting place for an impressive artistic and cultural circle.
The campaign gives the setting a present-day role. Blazy's collection enters rooms shaped by the founder, while Soth photographs models moving through the villa in an informal atmosphere. La Pausa connects the current Chanel house with a place long woven into its visual and cultural vocabulary.
Yana Peel of CHANEL Arts, Culture & Heritage said the restoration aimed to bring Gabrielle Chanel's creative spirit back to La Pausa. The estate is also expected to remain a place where artists can live and work, away from everyday distractions. The name La Pausa appears in Chanel's product language too, including the "La Pausa" shade in Rouge Coco.
La Pausa retains the austerity, symmetry and natural setting Chanel chose, while hidden infrastructure lets the house function today. New campaigns and future artistic activity give the villa a working cultural role. Its history informs that role, in keeping with a house built around independence, restraint and creative exchange.
