Woman of the World

AD catches up with internationally in-demand designer Laura Gonzalez at her brand-new Paris atelier.

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French actress Gaby Deslys was one of the Belle Époque's greatest luminaries. A celebrated F beauty and accomplished dancer, she played the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway with Al Jolson, starred in silent pictures, and was courted by some of the wealthiest men of the era, most notably Manuel II, the last king of Portugal. With her fortune, she bought herself a charming five-storey brick townhouse in Paris's 16th arrondissement-a decidedly bold move for a woman at that time. After her death, at 38, following an infection contracted during the Spanish-flu pandemic, the home was sold and divided into seven apartments. And so it carried on, until last year, when the French interior designer Laura Gonzalez purchased the entire building and transformed it into her company's new headquarters.

In restoring the building, "we treated it as a hôtel particulier", or grand private townhouse, rather than as corporate offices, Gonzalez explains, as she nestles into a comfy armchair in the second-floor conference room and pours herself a cup of tea. She retained much of the house's early-20th-century details, such as the rounded corners and archways, and reproduced period doors based on the one original that remained.