This article originally appeared in the May 2023 issue of Elle Decoration France
No, you are not dreaming: Everything, absolutely everything, in this house is pink! Glazed terra-cotta tiles, walls, terrazzo floors, speakers, switches, electrical outlets, awnings...it’s all there, and it’s pink.
“The idea was to create a monochrome monolith in line with coatings found on the walls of houses in Grasse,” says architect Lucie Niney, who designed the project alongside Thibault Marca, her partner at the firm NeM Architects. “It took us time—many color charts tested in full sun or in pouring rain—to find the right pink, one that stood out but that didn’t create a UFO in the landscape.”
Lancôme’s Fêtiche color can be seen inside and outside the home, paying homage to the famous centifolia rose, a bloom grown in Grasse, France, and the star of Lancôme’s perfume La Vie Est Belle.
When Lancôme purchased the estate in 2020, the centifolia roses were already there, but the land was fallow. Therefore, the entire planting and irrigation of the estate had to be reconsidered (here they practice integrative farming, with no heavy equipment or pesticides), and today these flowers grow better than ever. In fact, more than 10,000 plants bloom in May, followed by rows of iris, lavender, jasmine, fig trees, verbena, rosemary, and other flowers and aromatic herbs that perfume the land for nine months of the year. Local roses form the raw material for Lancôme’s fragrances Mille et une Roses and La Vie Est Belle Domaine de la Rose, which launched last year.
See Inside This All-Pink House
“They must be harvested by hand, between 5 and 7 a.m., and processed immediately so they don’t lose their olfactory properties,” explains Lucie Careri, the estate’s manager. “These are haute couture flowers—they’re too precious to be found at the florist!”
The building, meanwhile, also got a face-lift. “It was a building from the 1970s in its original condition,” remembers Niney. “After cleaning up the site by removing barns and sheds, we got down to the main house. Our first mission? An utterly eco-friendly design. Instead of air-conditioning, we used an underground heat exchanger to cool the space, and we insulated the building with lavender straw in the walls and rice straw for the roof. Because of these modifications, the building obtained the Mediterranean Sustainable Building [a sustainability framework for Mediterranean climates].”
“Inside,” Niney continues, “we simplified the volumes as much as possible with, among other moves, cathedral ceilings and a mezzanine in the living room and huge windows in every room to frame nature.” They kept the decor simple, adding furniture from local brands.
Besides being a working farm, the property is also designed to host perfumers and visitors. “The custom l’orgue à parfum [a semicircular piece of furniture used to organize and store raw perfume ingredients] is entirely covered in gold leaf by Ateliers Gohard and was designed so that our perfumers can come to the residence to work on their next fragrances,” adds Careri. With more than 350 vials of the most intoxicating scents, including papyrus, ginger, and Sicilian lemons, they are welcome to let their imaginations run wild.
A limited number of visitors will be able to discover Lancôme’s commitment to local culture and biodiversity (more than 250 different species thrive on the estate) during guided tours. They can discover the pink house, stroll through the lavender fields and allées of fig trees, and take in the iris beds shaded by olive trees before the tour’s highlight—the subterranean perfume distillery. Once there, it’s time to learn everything about the day in the life of a rose: harvesting, extraction, transformation, and the creation of Lancôme’s iconic products.
