page_title: La Pausa
section_title: Coco Chanel
hierarchical_section_title: La Pausa / Coco Chanel
caption_attribution_description: Great Hall in the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas
context_page_description: La Pausa is a large detached villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, in the Alpes-Maritimes department of France. It was designed and built by the French fashion designer Coco Chanel in the early 1930s, and owned by Chanel until 1953. La Pausa was sold by Chanel to the Hungarian publisher Emery Reves. The former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill spent roughly a third of each year at La Pausa from 1956 to 1958 with Reves and his wife, Wendy, and wrote and edited part of his History of the English Speaking Peoples there. La Pausa was occupied by Wendy Reves until 2007. The principal rooms of La Pausa and its significant art collection were recreated at the Dallas Museum of Art during her lifetime and under her direction. The Reves wing was opened in 1985.
  Situated above the village of Roquebrune, the house enjoys views toward Menton and the French border with Italy on one side, and Monaco on the other. Its name refers to the legend that Mary Magdalene "paused" near here on her journey from Jerusalem following the crucifixion of Jesus.
context_section_description: Chanel bought the five acre plot on which La Pausa was built for 1.8 million French francs in February 1929. The plot had formerly been part of the hunting grounds of the ruling family of Monaco, the Grimaldis, and contained wild olive and orange groves. The villa was built less than a year later. The final cost of the villa was 6 million francs, a large sum for the time. It is not clear whether Chanel or her lover, Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster financed the building and furnishing of La Pausa. La Pausa was built by architect Robert Streitz, who sought to build 'the ideal Mediterranean villa'.
  The design of the house modelled on the 12th-century convent-orphanage in Aubazine, in the department of Corréze, which Chanel spent her childhood. A stone staircase leads up from the main entrance hall and a cloister encloses a courtyard. A design of five windows is repeated throughout the house, in tribute to Chanel's perfume, Chanel No. 5. Chanel ordered more than 20,000 curved handmade tiles to be handmade for the roof, and furnished the house sparsely in shades of white and beige. Each bathroom has a servants entrance. Chanel would take Le Train Bleu from Paris every month to inspect the progress of the building. If Chanel was unable to make the trip, local craftsmen would be sent to Paris to meet her.
  The colour scheme of the house was beige, which included a beige piano. Chanel may have been assisted in her design of the interior of La Pausa by Stéphane Boudin, the president of the interior design firm Maison Jansen.
  The central villa is 10,000 sq ft in size, with two smaller villas built for guests. The main house consists of seven bedrooms, with three living rooms, a dining room, two kitchens and staff quarters. Streitz had previously restored another local villa for Chanel's friend, Count Jean de Segonzac.
  La Pausa contains three wings that face onto a shaded courtyard, with the rooms containing large fireplaces. The rooms were filled by Chanel with 16th-century English oak furniture, given to her by the Duke of Westminster; English oak was also used for floors and panelling. The large reception rooms were lit by wrought-iron chandeliers from Spain.
  The poet Pierre Reverdy stayed at La Pausa for long periods during the 1930s, and the poet Paul Iribe, Chanel's lover, collapsed and died while playing tennis with Chanel at La Pausa in 1935. Guests of Chanel's at La Pausa included Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Luchino Visconti.
  La Pausa was profiled by American Vogue magazine in 1938, with the garden described as containing "groves of orange trees, great slopes of lavender, masses of purple iris, and huge clusters of climbing roses." Twenty olive trees from Antibes were replanted in the garden. The designer Roderick Cameron said that at La Pausa, Chanel was the first to cultivate lavender and other flora previously regarded as "poor plants".
  The architect of La Pausa, Robert Streitz, was a member of the French Resistance during the German occupation of France in the Second World War. Streitz hid in La Pausa's cellars, from which he transmitted covert messages. Jewish refugees were also able to use La Pausa, using its gardens as a staging post in their escape from France to the Italian border. During the German occupation of France, Chanel made several visits to La Pausa with her lover, the German spy Baron von Dincklage.
  The design of La Pausa also influenced Chanel's fashion designs, with her collections evoking the pink and grey palettes of the house and landscape. In 2007 Chanel released a perfume inspired by La Pausa, 28 La Pausa, as part of their "Les Exclusifs" collection. It was created by Chanel's perfumer Jacques Polge.
caption: The Great Hall of La Pausa as reconstructed at the Dallas Museum of Art
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