FIG. 13 Great hall, Villa La Pausa, in Plaisir de France, 1935.
and in the bedroom referred to as the Duke of Westminster’s, where the cast iron bed is very simple, and there is no rug on the parquet floor (fig. 10). Chanel’s bathroom, with its modern furniture and floor made of small terracotta tiles, is exceedingly monastic (fig. 11). By contrast, in one of the guest rooms the marble and metal washstand is full of women’s toiletries (fig. 12). The black-and-white photographs accentuate the relatively severe atmosphere found throughout La Pausa. But this spartan simplicity would soon change.
In the 1930s, Chanel added a great many baroque elements to this spare, monastic decor, ushering in an eclectic style similar to that of the apartment she kept above her Paris boutique on rue Cambon. A color photo spread published in 1935 by the magazine Plaisir de France clearly shows this development (fig. 13).2 These photographs reveal spectacular additions to the decoration, such as the large euphorbia plants seen on the staircase of the great hall (fig. 2) and in the cloistered walkway (fig. 14). In accordance with the overall simplicity adopted 15