On home décor as an intimate crash course on French art, culture, and history.

By Megan Harlan

I’ll admit that, for many years, I was a little fuzzy about Napoleon—French history being a subject I’d somehow never studied in school, and the fact that there are three Napoleons not helping matters. But I finally locked in over a detail that—tellingly—caught my attention. It didn’t involve military prowess or empire-building. No, it involved a flair for decorating.

Napoleon Bonaparte—also known as Napoleon I, he of the Complex, and the Napoleon everyone means when we say “Napoleon”—ushered in the modern industries of French fashion and interior design. This was largely driven by his first wife, Empress Joséphine, a visionary patron of the arts following the French Revolution and Terror, when France, in shambles, desperately needed to reinvigorate its national identity and commercial prospects. Thanks to Joséphine’s aesthetic eye and Napoleon’s boundless megalomaniacal energy, whole industries in the visual and decorative arts were revived, founded, updated, and richly supported across France—from furniture to silk, tanneries to porcelain, pigments to metalwork. This laid the groundwork for innovations in the coming decades by companies still renowned for their quality, including Baccarat crystal (1816), Christofle silver (1830), and Hermès leather goods and fabrics (1837).* With the Napoleonic Empire in full swing, the newly established middle-class, or bourgeoisie, embraced this clever strategy of economic revival. Good taste became synonymous with patriotism—and France itself became the world’s leading producer of luxury design.

Fascinating 1801 portrait of Joséphine at home by François Gérard: her direct expression, casual posture, and spectacular couch speak volumes.

While I was buying the France House in late 2020, decorating it was not exactly top-of-mind: I was busy navigating the long road of the French property buying process. But as soon as we closed a few days before Christmas—three months after I’d made the initial verbal offer—it finally occurred to me: my family now owned an empty house in France.

Until that moment, hiring a decorator had never sounded appealing. I’ve always enjoyed muddling through where home décor is concerned, trying to learn from clever interior designers how to attractively mix elements of high and low, old and new, color and texture, history and taste. The French call this look “le mix”—and have perfected it ever since Joséphine herself made it de rigueur. What most draws me in are the layered stories told by furnishings united only by their current setting—the home. They comprise the visual, usable, sit-down-upon-able art of our everyday lives.

But there I was in COVID lockdown-era California, still unable to travel for the first half of 2021. How to buy a couch in France, never mind the right couch, never mind one that fit my (not enormous) budget? In fact I already knew of someone local who could beautifully decorate our house: Michelle Foxley, the British interior stylist long based in Brittany who’d staged the home we bought. My property agents put us in contact, and not long after a few Whats App chats, I hired her.

So began the delightful experience of having a talented professional decorate the France House, piece by piece, room by room—with me learning something about French furnishings along the way.

Michelle would visit Brittany’s brocantes—France’s free-wheeling cross between vintage shops, flea markets, and antiques stores—to source possible pieces. She’d choose her favorites, then send along photos to discuss suitability and price. I relied on her recommendations and—thanks to all that extra quarantine time—enjoyed researching what exactly these pieces were via reverse image searches. I soon discovered that similar furniture was often being sold on 1stdibs.com, though at exponentially, even ludicrously higher prices. But these listings helpfully provided their provenance and stray historical details, dating them to a Napoleon or a King Louis.

What, for example, was the bergère, or “shepherdess” chair, that would find a home in my son’s room? Why was this fancy but surprisingly comfortable armchair named for something so pastoral, with its fluted wood frame brushed in gilt, its upholstery made of fine tapestry? It turns out that the bergère had its heyday during Louis XVI (circa 1774-1793)—the ill-fated king to Marie Antoinette’s equally unfortunate queen. Before the Revolution, Marie Antoinette and her ladies infamously loved to play “peasant” in the Queen’s Hamlet at Versailles—an idyllic reproduction village stocked with real farm animals, kitchen gardens, and grazing grounds. The cushy seating for a so-called shepherdess now made sense.

Our bergère (doubtless a nice 19th-century reproduction, given that the price was about $200).

Another iconic French piece hailing from the reign of a King Louis is the bombé commode, or “bulging” chest of drawers. Michelle sourced this commode (a reproduction circa 1880-1900) made of mahogany marquetry, luscious pink Portoro marble, and foliate bronze hardware from a local brocante. The style dates to Louis XV (1710-1774), one of the floppiest kings of France, and who is—confusingly—the great-grandson of Louis XIV, his mighty predecessor best known as the “Sun King” and builder of Versailles, and the grandfather of his weak successor, Louis XVI, the king who would lose the monarchy (and his head) in the French Revolution. During his own 59-year kingship, Louis XV spent most of his time preening elegantly around court, taking countless lovers, avoiding his wife, and bringing France nearly to bankruptcy through appalling economic mismanagement (so much so that many historians blame him for the societal fury that caused the Revolution). Not surprisingly, Louis XV’s reign marked the height of “rococco” in France — that frothy, voluptuously decadent style defined by lightness, curves, and ornate flourishes.

the “bombé” commode where every part “bulges” (or at least curves)

side view of the bombé, in the salon’s  “Serge corner”

Perhaps in honor of “le mix,” Michelle also sourced—in the above photo—that excellent black-and-white photo of Serge Gainsbourg; the fringed and crystal-hung Art Nouveau lamp; the antique Persian carpet that strategically covers an ugly bit on the floor; and the stately globe, which handily doubles as…a mini-bar. It’s circa Austin Powers, according to my mom—who, having lived through the Swinging Sixties herself, has seen a few of these in her day. It’s now filled with stemware, French reds, Scotch and Breton whiskeys, and a Saint-Malo “pirate” rum.

So many other pieces deserve their own little write-ups, which I may take on in a future post. For now I’ll finish with the greatest challenge, furniture-wise, for any house: finding the aforementioned right couch. I’ll admit I’m as much an Anglophile as a Francophile (who’s to stop me?), and one reason I love Brittany is how British it is, the UK of course being right across the Channel. So it all seemed to fit when Michelle suggested: if you’re okay with a leather couch, how about a Chesterfield? Having lived in London as a kid and been obsessed with movies like Brideshead Revisited at a formative age, I’d always yearned for a Chesterfield of my own. Especially a green one. Because if you’re going to get the quintessentially English Chesterfield, you may as well go full British racing-car green Chesterfield.

Though I’d (naturally) never mentioned any of this to Michelle, she somehow materialized the vintage couch of my latent dreams during her furniture search. The problem: there was no way it would fit up our narrow spiral staircase to the salon. But Michelle was undaunted. And so one morning, this photo greeted me on my phone of how the green Chesterfield made it into the France House:

The Chesterfield’s dramatic entry. (The face of one of the lovely men responsible is blurred.)

And here I am making the best use of it a few months later. I like to think Joséphine herself would approve.

aka “the nap couch”

* For more, read L’Art de Vivre: Decorative Arts and Design in France 1789-1989 by Catherine Arminjon and Cooper-Hewitt Museum (Vendome Press/Rizzoli).