Haute Cabana
From his Portuguese retreat, interior designer Jacques Grange hides from his tony clients and trades his usual luxe for the simple life.
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Casa Nina is actually a collection of houses, a series of rough-hewn cabanas cradled in a valley of dunes in the Alentejo region, a remote stretch of the Portugese coast. The landscape design is by Louis Benech.
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Jacques Grange, 60, has created haute interiors for clients including Princess Caroline of Monaco, Yves Saint Laurent and François Pinault. His grand rooms are often furnished with great Louis XV, Napoleon III and Régence pieces.
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The living room cabana, replete with Fifties French furniture, pillows made from African fabrics and rugs from Morocco. “Not serious things,” Grange says.
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Grange’s collection of local arts and crafts include this 19th-century Portuguese ceramic figure.
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Seashells rest on an African chair.
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Portuguese ceramic lady-shaped jugs sit among ships-in-bottles.
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Grange with Vera Iachia, a member of the Espirito Santo family, which owned the land the cabanas are on. The family, one of Portugal’s wealthiest dynasties, had donated much of the land to form a nature preserve, where new construction was forbidden. But Grange managed to persuade the matriach of the family to sell him a parcel of the land.
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“It’s very funny to live in a staw house. It’s chic rustique,” Grange says, laughing. Here, a Provençal mirror hangs over a banquette.
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A large teak table from Bali dominates the living room cabana, which has a view of the dunes.
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A horse in the rice fields adjacent to the dunes.
