The approach to La Cavalerie is all anticipation. Down a hillside driveway lined with sun-dappled trees, any sign of the house stays hidden until the very last moment, when an austere chapel facade suddenly gives way to a three-storey stone building with blue shutters and a terrace bursting with pink oleanders. Stepping out of the car, the summer’s heat is a pleasant cloak; I feel the stress of real life fall away, just as the estate’s former owner, the French couturier Emmanuel Ungaro, must have when he came here in the mid 1980s at the peak of his career, seeking sunshine and solace away from the intensity of the Paris fashion world.
Setting out for parts of Tuscany and his native Provence, Ungaro came upon a 65-hectare estate located in a valley in the Luberon Regional Nature Park, the protected reserve recognised by Unesco. The site housed a 12th-century Templar Knight commandery with a chapel, now classified as a monument historique, to which a 17th-century convent had been adjoined. The buildings were in disrepair, but Ungaro’s mind was made up as he drove from the hilltop down into the valley, with its sweeping view of centuries-old olive trees and a driveway shaded by a line of green oaks and lindens.
“My father always said that he didn’t choose this place; it chose him,” says his daughter Cosima, 35, who is the current custodian of the estate along with her husband Austin Felder. Ungaro passed in 2019 and Cosima and Felder, whose creative agency Concept counts clients including Diptique and Bottega Veneta, have spent the past four years restoring and preparing the property for fully staffed private rentals. Ungaro didn’t plan for Cosima and Felder to carry on the estate; he felt it was too much to manage. Cosima credits Felder for giving her the courage to take it on: “I was lucky because I've always been in love with this place, but Austin is completely enamoured,” she says. “We will never find something else like this in our lifetime. We wanted to find ways to keep it going.”
Taking over management also meant futureproofing the estate, Felder tells me as we take a walk about the property. He studied sustainable practices, attending conferences on eco-friendly heating and cooling, and had specialists assess the land. La Cavalerie remains a working estate; the couple now produces an award-winning oil using Ungaro's 400-plus olive trees, favoured by top Parisian chefs. He points to the top of the property, where they found an underwater irrigation system that runs down to a reservoir. It feeds one of two chemical-free freshwater pools, one of which sits next to an open-air wellness sanctuary with a plunge pool drawn from a local spring. They also restored and converted a 17th-century bergerie, a short stroll from the main house, into a four-bedroom guesthouse, rebuilding it with reclaimed estate stone and hemp-lime insulation.
The interiors of the main house, on the other hand, remain largely untouched, every piece of furniture, artwork, and book evidence of the Ungaro’s passion for collecting and impeccable taste, though Cosima and Felder have discreetly updated it with modern comforts such as air conditioning and underfloor heating. Upstairs, there are five bedrooms with en-suites. Mine is the “yellow room” — a cosy, sun-warmed space anchored by a plush double bed blanketed with embroidered antique quilts, its windows framing the lap pool and the valley beyond. Ungaro’s original 130-square-metre palatial suite, which has a spacious mezzanine bathroom, is just down the hall. Cosima recalls her father's daily ritual: after lunch, he'd retreat to his room for a siesta and lengthy grooming session, emerging in the evening dressed in white linen and wearing his signature scent, composed of ciste labdanum, jasmine and patchouli. "He really loved having the house to himself while everybody was at the pool," she says. "We'd ask, 'Where were you?' And he'd look at us like, 'Why would I leave my room?'"
On the first evening we dine on the south terrace, taking in panoramic views of the Luberon hills framed by Aleppo pines. The warm air drapes around us like a blanket, and the musical thrum of cicadas is our soundtrack. Ungaro was one of six children, born in 1933 in Aix-en-Provence to parents who had fled fascist Italy. This part of France felt like home to him, and was not dissimilar to the Tuscan countryside. Our menu tonight has been designed by chef Bernardo Costantino and is, like everything else at La Cavalerie, distinctly Italian. It is inspired by the meals Cosima ate as a child, many of which were cooked by her mother, Laura – by all accounts an exuberant hostess with a passion for l'art de la table. Cosima recalls scouring countryside brocantes with her mother in a bright red Golf Cabriolet, hunting for additions to Laura's extensive tableware collection. Her ceramics and Venetian glassware still fill the downstairs pantry and grace every table.
Dinners are made with light, fresh ingredients, often centered on seafood: we eat sea bass carpaccio with fragrant tomato water, red prawns with chickpeas and rosemary, and strawberry frangipane tart. Lunches celebrate Italian classics such as paccheri al pomodoro and vitello tonnato. Much of the produce comes from La Tour d'Aigues' weekly market. "There's a couple we've sourced from for over a decade," Cosima explains. "Our fishmonger Pascal works there too – my mother started buying from his father 30 years ago when he ran the business. They bonded over their shared Italian heritage."
Laura and Emmanuel married in 1989. The couturier had previously dated the likes of Jackie Kennedy, before she became an Onassis, and Anouk Aimée – it was thanks to Laura that he returned to his Italian roots. He rebuilt La Cavalerie in the guise of a fine Italian villa, recreating “precise memories of Italy, from the façade of the main piazza in Pienza to the windows of the Palazzo Tè in Mantova.” The pair toured all over Italy and to the antique fairs of Arezzo, Brescia, and Parma, buying art and furniture and salvaging reclaimed grandiose marble fireplaces, tiled flooring, ornate coffered ceilings, and stone staircases. He rendered the interiors in the sun-bleached colours of Tuscany – ochre, honeyed and patina yellows and terracottas – and commissioned an artist to draw the vivid ceiling frescoes in the grand salon. It was a monumental project, and has turned out to be his legacy: ‘‘My dreams nourished this house. It was a ruin, now I am,” he once joked.
“My memories of this house are of my dad letting loose. When he was here, he also had a very specific way of living this life. He would call it the Maison de Liberty,” Cosima says of her father, who was rigorous and focused when in his atelier in Paris, but who played music loudly — he loved Beethoven and sang along loudly to opera — when he was here. “I once wrote him a letter saying, ‘You’re French in Paris, but you're Italian in La Cavalerie,” she says.
My stay here has the same inviting warmth and daily rhythm the Ungaros have always enjoyed. The day centres around meals and time spent in the pool, though there is plenty to offer in the region – hiking, horse-riding, tennis and golf – if guests can tear themselves away. It's a house for all seasons, too, with a winter kitchen paved in terracotta tiles Ungaro sourced in Naples, and a summer kitchen opening onto the northern terrace for al fresco dining beneath the century-old trees that filter the midsummer heat. Despite its antique furnishings – hand-painted armoires, Italian baroque pieces, sofas upholstered in handwoven Kuba textiles, oil paintings – the house has the comfort of a family home. It feels natural to pad around in bare feet and curl up in the corner with a book.
Cosima says her father had a complicated relationship with legacy, having sold his business long before he passed. Sometimes, she lies awake at night and wonders what he would make of her and Felder’s ambitions. “I do believe that he would be happy to know how much we care and how much of everything that he taught us, or even didn't teach us, we uphold,” she says, adding: “My father often said that his dream nourished this house, and now La Cavalerie is a place that nourishes dreams. A home for dreamers. A place to grow.”