The Prince, the Chateau, and the Palazzo

This is Jacques Garcia, the prince of French design, in his signature Berluti red socks:

Photo:Robert Maxwell

This is the house that Jacques lives in (when not in Paris). It certainly seems befitting a prince:

Le Chateau du Champ de Bataille.

Jacques can design interiors like this:

Salon at Champ de Bataille.

However, Jacques can also design interiors like this:

The new d'Orsay condominiums in New York.

Jacques Garcia, born in 1947, is architect, interior designer, and the occasional landscape designer. He has redesigned 35 rooms of the Louvre's Decorative Arts Galleries and he has worked for years restoring the royal apartments at Versailles--no more grand, but essentially empty rooms. In addition to the many private residences, Jacques has designed countless hotels and restaurants all over the world. He can work with 17th and 18th-century antiques (which he collects) or create new sleek modern pieces. Being French, he is accustomed to layers of history and is not afraid to mix them. Nothing is so sacrosanct in a Jacques Garcia design; things can be changed, moved around, or imperfect.(Imagine that!)

A recent example of Jacques' work, a onetime olive factory has been transformed into an elegant, but relaxed palazzo. Jacques has mixed Roman antiquities with twentieth and even a few twenty-first-century pieces. Take a look:

By-the-way, Jacques bought Le Chateau du Champ de Bataille in 1992. He has recreated the gardens and has restored and designed the interiors (now in its second re-design). He has documented all of this in an amazing book which would make a nice gift: