Where famous fashion designers grew up and lived
Explore the homes and neighbourhoods of 6 famous fashion designers, and how each place shaped the person they became.
Christian Dior1905–1925
📍 Villa Les Rhumbs, 1 Rue d'Estouteville, 50400 Granville, France
My parents bought Les Rhumbs in 1906, when I was a baby — a Belle Époque villa perched on a cliff top at Granville, on the Normandy coast, named after the old sailors' term for the…
Coco Chanel1895–1901
📍 Abbaye d'Aubazine, Le Bourg, 19190 Aubazine, Corrèze, France
I was born Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel on the 19th of August 1883 in Saumur, Loire, but it was the orphanage and convent at Aubazine in the Corrèze region of central France that truly formed…
Gianni Versace1992–1997
📍 Casa Casuarina, 1116 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach, FL 33139, USA
I grew up in Reggio Calabria, at the toe of Italy, with my older brother Santo and my little sister Donatella. My mother, Francesca, was a successful dressmaker, and her atelier on Via…
Karl Lagerfeld1934–1952
📍 Bad Bramstedt, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
I was born in Hamburg, but the countryside I remember is Bissenmoor, the estate near Bad Bramstedt where my family lived in the manor house in the 1930s. My father, Otto, had made his…
Vivienne Westwood1941–1957
📍 Tintwistle, Derbyshire, UK
I was born Vivienne Swire in Tintwistle, a village on the edge of the Peak District near Glossop, in 1941. My father, Gordon, came from a family of shoemakers, and my mother, Dora, worked…
Yves Saint Laurent1980–2008
📍 Villa Oasis, Jardin Majorelle, Rue Yves Saint Laurent, Marrakech 40090, Morocco
I grew up in Oran, on the coast of French Algeria, a shy, slender boy in a comfortable family; I designed dresses for my sisters' paper dolls and was bullied at school, and I escaped into…