Our holiday curation draws its spirit from the beguiling life and legacy of Madeleine Castaing, a collector of color, confidante of poets, and a fixture of Paris’s creative circles in the 1940s . “I decorate houses the way others paint pictures or write books,” she once declared, and indeed, every room she touched became a story told in color and texture.
Castaing was a master of contradiction: scholarly yet whimsical, refined yet daring. Her interiors defied convention with walls cloaked in leopard spots, lush fabrics, and unexpected bursts of color—lime green, rose pink, sky blue—each hue carefully chosen to conjure emotion. She transformed the familiar into the fantastical, creating spaces that felt both real and imagined.
Throughout her storied career, she collaborated with cultural greats such as Jean Cocteau, Yves Saint Laurent, André Malraux, and Françoise Sagan, who all found in her a kindred creative spirit. Her celebrated boutique, at the corner of Rue Jacob and Rue Bonaparte in Paris’s 6ᵗʰ arrondissement, became a destination for aesthetes and bohemians alike—a cabinet of curiosities where neoclassical silhouettes mingled with velvet chairs and turquoise glass lamps. Our Castaing Holiday Edit reimagines this spirit of daring elegance.
Each object captures a fragment of her enchanting world: a play of contrasts and a wink of kitsch.
