Jasper Conran to Buy Yves Saint Laurent’s Moroccan Villa
NEW PAVILION: The Fondation Jardin Majorelle has agreed to sell Villa Mabrouka in Tangier, Morocco, “the House of Luck” owned by the late Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé, to British designer Jasper Conran.
In line with the instructions of Bergé, who cofounded the Fondation Jardin Majorelle with Saint Laurent, the proceeds of the sale will benefit the nonprofit organization, which oversees the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Marrakech, Morocco, and the adjoining Jardin Majorelle and its Berber Museum, the foundation said on Thursday.
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“A resident of Marrakech, the acclaimed British designer Mr. Conran will undoubtedly continue the rich heritage of the property and contribute to the vibrant and cosmopolitan revival of Tangier currently underway,” Madison Cox, president of the Fondation Jardin Majorelle, said in a statement.
Saint Laurent and Bergé purchased the villa in the Nineties and asked Jacques Grange to decorate the interior.
“The theme was an eccentric Fifties Englishman who had come to live in Tangier. Yves wanted chintz and one color per room: a blue room, a yellow and so on. It was like decorating a house for characters out of a play by Tennessee Williams,” Grange said in “Les Paradis Secrets d’Yves Saint Laurent et de Pierre Bergé.”
Grange completed a restoration of the seaside villa last year, though too late for Bergé, who died in 2017, to see it. Cox, a garden designer who was Bergé’s husband, planted the property with palms, lemon trees, roses, bougainvillea and hydrangea hedges.
Since Bergé died at the age of 86, a number of his personal possessions have gone under the hammer.
An auction of Bergé’s personal possessions last year raised $31.3 million, setting a record for a “house sale” at Sotheby’s in Paris. Named “From One House to Another,” the October sale featured 975 lots from the French businessman’s homes in Paris, Normandy and Provence in France, and Morocco.
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