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"AD Revisits: Fashion Designers at Home\nScores of haute couture havens have appeared in Architectural Digest over the decades, from Crist\u00F3bal Balenciaga's exquisitely sober French manor house to Geoffrey Beene's peppy Art Deco Manhattan apartment\u2014and each is a glorious reminder that fashion's geniuses often live as inspiringly as they design\nEven though the Spanish-born Balenciaga (1895\u20131972) lived in France for much of his creative life, the restrained opulence associated with his native land infused his oeuvre: an evening dress echoed a Vel\u00E1zquez infanta's stately farthingale, jewel-tone silks recalled candlelit cathedrals. La Reinerie, his venerable country house near Orl\u00E9ans (AD, October 1994), possessed a similarly Iberian sobriety. Arranged by French decorator Serge Royaux in the 1950s, its rooms were sternly edited explorations of texture and form. Waxed wood tables and gleaming bronze objets d'art warmed the spare settings\u2014Balenciaga never seemed to own much more than was necessary\u2014while the intricate patterns of the home's rare Cuenca carpets evoked the ingenious seams that made the master's deceptively effortless fashions magical.\n\nFashion designer Crist\u00F3bal Balenciaga (whom Coco Chanel admiringly called the only true couturier) in his study at La Reinerie in 1962; on the bookcase is a photograph of his friend Marc Chagall.\nThe entrance hall and dining room of La Reinerie, decorated by Serge Royaux. The gilded mirror and console are French antiques, and Louis XVI caned fauteuils surround the mahogany table.\nThe salon's Cuenca carpets provided the color palette for the room's decorative scheme, from the golden damask on the sofa and wing chairs to the red velvet topping a Spanish footstool; bronze stags sit beside the 16th-century Spanish table, and metal candlesticks and small urns add lively reflective notes.\nArt Deco style has captivated many fashion greats, from Jacques Doucet to Yves Saint Laurent, each giving it a personal spin. In his New York City duplex apartment, featured in the September 1988 issue of AD, the fiercely independent Beene (1924\u20132004) embraced the movement's sassy shades and geometric lines\u2014motifs that appeared frequently in his clothing designs, which were worn by the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Faye Dunaway, and Glenn Close\u2014but made Deco contemporary and comfortable. Deep-dish upholstery invited lounging, and candy-bright orchids from Beene's Long Island greenhouse provided tropical accents. He also leavened the Legrain, Dunand, and Arbus furnishings and Tchelitchew, Magritte, and Dal\u00ED artworks with surprising departures from the treasure-trove norm. \"I combine something artsy-craftsy with something very refined,\" Beene told AD. Hence the guest room's hand-painted abstract mural (it was copied from the space's Jean Arp carpet) and decorative oak screen, a once-nondescript piece that the designer gave an Edo air with black lacquer and translucent glass panels.\n\nBeene, seen here in 1993.\nA circa-1928 lacquer screen is displayed atop a dresser in the designer's Manhattan bedroom, along with a stone torso by British sculptor Frank Dobson.\nIn the living area, an Andr\u00E9 Arbus carpet joins a mural of water-polo players painted in the style of William Roberts; the three-part copper panel depicting the goddess Diana is by Paul Mergier.\nThe guest room's abstract mural replicates the Jean Arp rug spread across the floor.\nWhy complicate paradise? That was the philosophy behind the one-bedroom getaway on the Caribbean island of St. Barts that was commissioned in the 1990s by Claiborne (1929\u20132007) and Art Ortenberg, her husband and business partner. Set on a verdant hilltop site, the poured-concrete house (AD, August 2004) was designed by the Manhattan firm Studio MORSA and local architect Pierre Monsaingeon with rock-accented walls interrupted by shapely terraces and sliding glass doors. The relaxing decor was as smart as Claiborne's popular sportswear, with polished-concrete floors, African artifacts, and an open-air shower.\nSensual curves soften the modern architecture of the fashion designer's St. Barts home. The concrete sofa and wood armchair feature cushions of African mud cloth.\nGuests enter the property via a footbridge that crosses a sparkling 66-foot-long lap pool; landscape designer Larry Nathanson created the lush gardens, which are planted with foxtail palms, Cuban fan palms, bougainvillea, jasmine, and other tropical vegetation.\nAdmiring the past without living in it is a trick that Givenchy (b. 1927) has always handled with aplomb. In 1968, when he renovated his townhouse apartment in Paris's Faubourg Saint-Germain (AD, June 1978), the marquis turned haute couturier\u2014he retired in 1995\u2014called on Charles Sevigny, an expat American decorator. Sevigny sheathed walls in bronze-tint mirror and covered floors with snuff-brown carpeting. Into this clarified envelope came era-spanning riches\u2014Boulle extravagances next to streamlined Knoll ottomans, a regal commode opposite one of Poul Kj\u00E6rholm's angular PK22 chairs, and a Louis XV berg\u00E8re cozied up to a mod horn-veneer table. Givenchy got precisely what he told AD he desired: \"A perfect mixture of the sumptuous and the simple.\"\n\nHubert de Givenchy, seen here in 1978.\nThe designer's mirrored Paris dining room hosts collages by Nicolas de Sta\u00EBl (left) and Georges Braque (right); the gilt-wood side chairs are Jacob, and the Louis XV mantel displays a Robert Courtright mask.\nIn the salon, an ornate desk and armoire, both by 17th-century cabinetmaker Andr\u00E9-Charles Boulle, mingle with a modern cocktail table and a Joan Mir\u00F3 painting.\nA Boulle commode brings history to the contemporary bedroom; a Ben Nicholson abstraction hangs behind the platform bed, which is flanked with works by Mir\u00F3 (left) and Kurt Schwitters (right)."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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