SCENTS & SENSIBILITY
This château is where Victoire de Taillac-Touhami and her family come to regroup and it provides inspiration for the parfumerie she founded
DINING ROOM
The table, which displays silverware and doubles as an extension to the main dining table, came from Victoire’s Scottish grandmother. The mosaic floor was added in the 19th century by an Italian craftsman who worked on a number of key houses in the region. The sideboard (left) is from the Pyrenees and the curtain fabric was bought in Jaipur
KITCHEN
This room’s warm tones of copper, timber and terracotta are offset with a cartouche-style wallpaper featuring scenes of palm trees and animals in fresh blue and white. Rousseau wallpaper, Cole & Son
SITTING ROOM
A friend painted panels above the windows, picking out motifs from the chinoiserie wallpaper. On the secretaire is a Meissen candelabra while the rug belongs to Victoire’s mother, who was born in Aleppo. Summer Palace wallpaper, Laura Ashley
Victoire de Taillac-Touhami and her husband, Ramdane Touhami, may have moved all over the world with their work, but this historic château in Gascony has always been a constant in their peripatetic lives. ‘It’s a real family home where my mother, my four siblings and our children can come; sometimes it’s all of us, sometimes it’s one of us,’ Victoire explains, adding, ‘Even when we were living in Tokyo, we came back for Christmas because it was so important for our three children to be here.’ Victoire and Ramdane are the dynamic creatives responsible for the revival of the oldest candlemaker in the world, Cire Trudon; nine years ago, they took on a new challenge by relaunching a 19th-century Parisian parfumerie, Officine Universelle Buly. Victoire is in no doubt the château has influenced the couple’s passion for historical brands. ‘The smell of the old leather books in the library inspired Ramdane to create one of Cire Trudon’s candle fragrances and we have some beautiful woodcut prints in Buly’s Rue Bonaparte store in Paris that used to hang in my mother’s bathroom; they also inspired some of the packaging,’ she notes. The oldest parts of the house were built in the 14th century for the bishop of nearby Auch Cathedral, although much of the building dates back to the 16th and 17th centuries. It was bought in the 1920s by Victoire’s grandfather shortly after he married his Scottish wife. ‘My late father was born in the house and he was incredibly attached to it. Ninety-five per cent of our childhood holidays were spent here,’ says Victoire.
The interior decoration is largely the work of Victoire’s mother, Marie-Cécile. ‘She renovated it in the 1970s and since then rooms have been updated when needed, although this is the source of endless discussions. Some of my siblings never want
