Chanel’s Famed La Pausa Getaway Is Back—This Time, as a Cultural Retreat

The French Riviera in the 1920s and ’30s was the ultimate playground, a place for the cultural elite to let loose. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald immediately come to mind when recalling that era, as do Man Ray, Rudolph Valentino, Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, and Pablo Picasso. Another key figure, of course, was Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, whose famous uniform of espadrilles, loose jersey trousers, and sailor tops captured the Cote d’Azur’s spirit of easygoing, sun-drenched elegance. But not everyone knows that as Chanel was crafting the blueprint for modern luxury through clothes, she was also overseeing the construction of a clifftop villa, La Pausa, in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.

Rejecting the fussy and the superfluous, Chanel commissioned architect Robert Streitz to design a structure that stood in deliberate contrast to the region’s Mediterranean style. La Pausa was conceived as an almost monastic monument to simplicity: clean lines, pale walls, and a stark, double-flight stone staircase that was a deliberate echo of the convent orphanage where Chanel spent her youth. In this retreat, Chanel didn’t just entertain; she curated a rarefied yet surprisingly informal salon. She brought together the era’s most electrifying minds, including Jean Cocteau, Igor Stravinsky, Salvador Dalí, and many more, fostering a spirit of creative freedom.

Chanel sold La Pausa in 1953 to the Hungarian émigré publisher Emery Reves and his wife, Wendy. The spirit of the house shifted, but the guest list remained stellar. Sir Winston Churchill became a regular visitor, staying for months to write in a suite overlooking the sea; other invitees included Greta Garbo and Grace Kelly. After the Reves passed away, the house of Chanel reacquired La Pausa in 2015; the subsequent restoration, overseen by architect Peter Marino, celebrated the villa’s original spirit. Many of the original furnishings were sourced from auctions and private dealers; others were meticulously reproduced. The idea, according to Marino, was for the interiors to feel “like Gabrielle had just left the building.”

Now, La Pausa is a private heritage site for Chanel and a core component of its cultural programming, which includes residencies and events for artists and thinkers. One such get-together took place recently—a writer’s retreat led by the Turkish-American professor and critic Merve Emre. Four very different writers convened to discuss a variety of topics, under the general umbrella of “the self-made woman:” Laure Adler, the French journalist and broadcaster, author of the prizewinning biography “Marguerite Duras, A Life;” Tiya Miles, a Harvard professor, author of seven books, and the only two-time winner of Yale’s Frederick Douglass Prize for the Study of Slavery, Abolition, and Resistance; Sarah Scoles, a science journalist and writer currently studying what happened before the universe’s big bang; and Mayukh Sen, the James Beard-winning author of “Tastemakers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America” and “Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star.”

“Gabrielle Chanel collected people,” said Yana Peel, Chanel’s president of art, culture and heritage, before dinner with these and other guests. “There was a beautiful opportunity, after restoring La Pausa, to think about how to animate and enliven the space that housed such incredible minds. How would it feel to reconnect around that spirit of Cocteau and Colette?”

La Pausa’s new chapter fits into Chanel’s broader approach to culture, which is partner-led, long-reaching, and philanthropic in nature. Rather than open its own museum, as other luxury brands have done, the house teams with institutions around the world to help further a variety of initiatives. “There are themes that we are always excited to support, like the love of literature and the advancement of women, because they relate to the DNA of the house in a very authentic way,” said Peel. “We want to bring people together who should know each other, who could do something additive that accelerates the ideas that shape culture forward.”

In this instance, over several days, the writers discussed the challenges in crafting biographies, the individual’s role in history, and the complexities of using archival materials. After the closing dinner, there was a recital by Célia Oneto Bensaid, a French pianist specializing in works by female composers. What was most striking about the gathering was how natural it felt, at a time when almost every official cultural interaction becomes a meme or an opportunity for promotion. There was, to use the jargon of our times, no “deliverable.”

“Whatever emerges from these writers will probably be a brilliant spark of something,” said Peel. “I hope they came to La Pausa as stars and left as a constellation.”