Villa Paul Poiret

Mézy-sur-Seine, France

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

Find out more

Perched above the Seine Valley near Paris, Villa Paul Poiret is a landmark of early modernist design built for fashion designer Paul Poiret between 1921 and 1925. Architect Robert Mallet-Stevens created the house in reinforced concrete, employing a Cubism-inspired geometric vocabulary characteristic of Art Deco. The residence comprises 25 rooms across three levels within 800 square metres of floor space, set amid nearly 12 acres of parkland. Its most distinctive feature is a dramatic 7-metre-tall corner salon with floor-to-ceiling windows commanding panoramic views. After Poiret sold the house in 1930, actress Elvira Popescu acquired it and commissioned architect Paul Boyer in 1932 to remodel the interiors in the fashionable "Paquebot" steamship style, converting windows to portholes and rounding terrace corners. Following decades of neglect and deterioration, the building was rescued and sensitively restored beginning in 1999, preserving both Mallet-Stevens's original modernist exterior and Popescu's Art Deco interventions. Now protected as a historic monument, the villa opens to the public during France's annual Heritage Days.