For €80,000 per week, you can stay in Karl Lagerfeld‘s former villa on the Côte d’Azur, just above Monte-Carlo beach.
Lagerfeld called Villa La Vigie home for over a decade, and, as the story goes, rented it from his longtime friend Princess Caroline for a symbolic one franc per year. He began restoring the then-dilapidated property in 1986, with help from art historian and Vogue Paris creative director Patrick Hourcade, spending millions to bring the villa to its current glory. Lagerfeld staged numerous shoots at the home during his time at the helm of Chanel, and also photographed Princess Caroline and Stefano Casiraghi alongside their three children there for the royal couple’s fifth wedding anniversary. Photographer Alice Springs lensed the late, great fashion editor André Leon Talley at the villa; a signed print of the shot inscribed with “with love to André” was sold for $37,800 as part of Christie’s auction of Talley’s collection earlier this year.
“André Leon Talley, ‘La Villa Vigie’,” 1989, by Alice Springs.
Available for rent all year round, the well-appointed villa features stunning views overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, the Principality of Monaco, and the bay of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. Its six bedrooms accommodate up to 12 guests, and a stay includes daily housekeeping and maintenance, breakfast prepared and served daily, access to the Monte-Carlo Beach Club (plus a vehicle to take you to and from), and service from Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer’s hotel operations staff (SBM also owns the iconic Hôtel de Paris as well as the Hôtel Hermitage). Additional staff, catering, and anything else that springs to mind is also available on request—for an additional cost, of course.
