Coco Chanel’s Former Highland Hideaway Will Be Turned into a Luxury Hotel

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In the 1920s, Coco Chanel brought her French style to the Scottish countryside, making Rosehall Estate her summer home. She stole away to the stone manor with Hugh “Bendor” Grosvenor, the second Duke of Westminster and one of the richest men in the world. There they shared a (not-so) clandestine romance and Rosehall became known as their love nest . The estate was abandoned for 52 years, but will soon be turned into a luxury hotel after being purchased by an undisclosed buyer.

Originally built in 1820, the rustic 22-room mansion was redecorated by the fashion designer who outfitted the space with wallpapers and decor more suited to her Parisian sensibility. According to the Historic Environment Scotland, a public body that preserves and promotes Scotland’s historic sites, Chanel applied her pioneering style to the home. “The striking simplicity, with shades of beige and basic replacement chimneypieces in painted timber, would have been significantly radical for its time,” it stated. Several rooms still show her elegant style today, bathed in her neutral color palette and hand-picked floral wallpaper. Once the interior was to her taste, Chanel and Grosvenor hosted several well known guests, including then-future prime minister Winston Churchill and his family.

Sitting on 700 acres of the Scottish Highlands, Rosehall Estate (named after the hamlet where it’s located) includes five outbuildings, a garden, a lake, and a river on its expansive grounds. Chanel was known to enjoy the surrounding nature with Grosvenor and their guests. “This is a very agreeable house in a Highland valley,” Churchill while at Rosehall in May 1927. “Well-equipped with salmon, trout, and snipe. The air is most exhilarating, keen and yet caressing. It is quite different to England. Coco got three fish yesterday.”

The designer, who reportedly wore her lovers’ clothes on occasion, even took inspiration for her iconic tweed suits from Grosvenor’s fishing and hunting clothes. Chanel’s admiration for sport and Scotland also translated into fair isle sweaters that have been carried into the maison’s collections, most recently appearing in the Fall/Winter 2019 collection.

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