Family

Spring breeze in a bright, colourful, and joyful family apartment in central Paris.

colombe campana

At

Colombe Campana, Gaïa 14, Maurice 10 and Jacques, 5 years old

The first thing you notice as you pass through the impressive entrance to this opulent building is the infinite tranquillity of the place. We are visiting a house somewhere in the heart of Paris that is full of the joys of spring and overlooks a beautiful garden. This is where Colombe Campana, founder of Call It By Your Name, her husband and their three children live like a clan occupying these vast spaces, surrounded by cheerful colours, family furniture and handmade objects. Hanging is given pride of place in this large, bright apartment, and contemporary paintings decorate the walls, which are deliberately left white. The layout and circulation of this light-filled apartment are not insignificant either: they say a lot about the lifestyle this Parisian family has adopted. Strangely enough, it's the master bedroom that is at its heart, a real living space that's open to everyone coming and going, and it closes off the dining room and living rooms at the same time as it opens the way to the children's bedrooms. This is where they have breakfast together as a family every day, and they like their breakfast in bed! We join them one Wednesday afternoon when it's the children's time.

Location

Paris

Author

Elsa Cau

Photos and videos

Jeanne Perrotte, Carine Bouhier

colombe campana
colombe campana
colombe campana

TSF

Colombe, would you introduce yourself, please?

Colombe

I’m 42, Parisian, and I’ve always lived in Paris. My husband and I have been married for nearly 15 years; he works in the property sector. I have three children: Gaïa, who is thirteen and a half; Maurice, who will soon be ten; and Jacques, who is almost five.

TSF

Can you tell us about your background?

Colombe

I trained as a fashion designer. I studied at Studio Berceau in Paris, and then I worked for several brands, mostly French ones. I began my career as a designer with Capucine Puerari. Then, I joined Sonia Rykiel, where I worked under Nathalie Rykiel, and I worked with her on the lingerie collections as well as the peripheral projects they were able to create around the brand. Then I returned to Claudie Pierlot before I was asked by H&M to work on a project that was very much in its infancy at the time: &other stories. I spent two and a half years working on the brand concept and on setting up a design office in Paris before they opened. Then, for over three years, I worked on developing the collections that were destined for Paris. I left in 2017 to become the artistic director of the Tara Jarmon brand. I started my own business just before the lockdown. When the pandemic hit, I was freelancing for a variety of brands. The lockdown hit pretty hard! We left and went to the country. It was there I went back to what I’d started a year earlier: embroidering bandanas with my children’s names and framing them for their bedrooms. My friends asked me to make some for them. They posted about them spontaneously on social networks and then… All hell broke loose! In the space of a couple of days, I found myself with around a hundred requests. People thought it was a brand… So, I created it as one.

TSF

How did you build your brand?

Colombe

Everything happened completely organically, and as the days went on, I found embroiderers. I was contacted by Le Bon Marché, who asked me to think about designing a collection of accessories… Things were complicated given the context at the time (Covid-19, editors note) but also completely fluid. Everything unfolded naturally, step by step. I now work almost exclusively on developing the brand. Initially, it grew well in France, but now it’s expanding to the United States and Asia.

TSF

What is the concept behind Call It By Your Name?

Colombe

The collection consists of hand-embroidered, personalised American bandannas made up in a variety of forms. We also do some up-cycling. I find vintage bandanas and transform them into unique, ready-to-wear pieces.

TSF

What sort of environment did you grow up in? And how did that influence your tastes?

Colombe

I grew up in Paris, in a fairly traditional environment. My parents are both lawyers. They had their own practice. I was privately educated, but it soon became apparent that I had a penchant for all things artistic, particularly drawing and painting. My parents took us to museums a lot. By the time I was about twelve, I knew that I wanted to be a fashion designer. My mother loves fashion. She’s kept the most beautiful pieces from throughout her life, in particular, Saint Laurent from the 1970s. She also loved one of the first concept stores in Paris, the now defunct Hémisphère, which brought together the finest craftsmanship from around the world: the very best Scottish Shetland, Mexican skirts… This had a big influence on my taste for fashion and crafts: I like truly authentic, timeless, handmade things. And that goes for fashion as well as interior design in my home!

TSF

What was your family’s apartment like?

Colombe

My father loves decorating and is a great admirer of Madeleine Castaing. So there was a real bias: leopard-print carpets, fabrics with lots of flowers and stripes, mixtures of prints and really bold colours. I certainly didn’t grow up in a restrained environment! Our apartment was on the top floor of a house with a mansard roof, so it had an attic, which was very cosy, almost reminiscent of an English country house. It was quite surprising for a Parisian interior!

Above Colombe and Jacques, a large painting by the artist Idir Davaine, which she particularly cherishes.

Colombe Campana

Our bedroom is a real thoroughfare, located at the crossroads of the bedrooms and bathrooms on one side, and the suite of living rooms and dining room on the other!

"I discovered this artist on Instagram: Mary Eastman. This drawing has something reminiscent of David Hockney that I like."

"I discovered this artist on Instagram: Mary Eastman. This drawing has something reminiscent of David Hockney that I like."

TSF

How did you find this place?

Colombe

We moved in here five years ago. We lived in the same building, lower down, on the first floor. The proportions were superb, but we still had to redo a lot of things, including changing the layout of the rooms and opening up a doorway that had been blocked between the two living rooms. The small sitting room we’re in used to be a bedroom, and we wanted to turn it into an office. But in the end, we work better in the dining room… So we turned it into a little reading room. We also watch films in here as a family. The large living room is more suitable for entertaining. But we also spend a lot of time in there sprawled out together on top of each other at the weekend! Last year, we also reclaimed a utility area and turned it into a second bathroom.

TSF

How did you go about decorating the apartment?

Colombe

I wanted to keep the walls white and unadorned so that I could add splashes of colour through the artwork and furniture. The only exception to this rule is the hall, which is painted mustard, buttercup… I wanted to use a slightly unexpected colour, and I felt I could afford to use it in this small space. Just like the cloakroom in the hall, which is decorated with a fun wallpaper! Well, I did put up a green floral wallpaper in the kitchen to achieve the country feel that I liked at the time, but after lockdown, I couldn’t bear looking at it any more. I stripped it completely and painted it white. I really like paintings and photographs, and I often buy them. So the canvases and prints were the starting points for decorating the apartment, along with ceramics and colour in general. We also inherited quite a few sofas and armchairs from our families. In fact, we don’t buy much furniture. In any case, we don’t look specifically for it; we happen across things, we like them, and we buy them! Here, our interior has changed a lot in five years, and it’s continually changing. Things rotate, and we move them around according to the way we feel.

TSF

Was the whole family involved in the decorating?

Colombe

I did most of it… I’m a bit dictatorial about it (laughs), but everyone contributes their ideas – I sometimes veto them, though.

TSF

What is your life like in the apartment?

Colombe

We spend a lot of time here. It’s a very pleasant space to live in during the day as well as at night. Above all, the silence is golden… which means we can often work from home. My offices are designed to be open-plan, and I can isolate myself and concentrate better here, especially in the dining room. It’s very conducive to working and offers peace and quiet with its big bookshelves. It’s a bit like having a bit of the countryside in Paris, here! As a family, we spend most of our time in the kitchen. It’s where we eat lunch and dinner and chat around the table or the island… I have more of a kitchen reflex than a living room reflex. And then… I spend a lot of time in bed. We have breakfast in bed with the children nearly every day. I also like to read in bed.

TSF

You have reflected this in the way your space flows: your bedroom is really open and central here, at the end of the hallway after the dining room and living rooms, opening the way to the other bedrooms and bathrooms.

Colombe

Yes, that was the intention! It’s a place for people to pass through, where everyone can come and go.

TSF

Do you entertain very much here?

Colombe

Yes, but less since the pandemic. I had my third child while I was setting up my business. There wasn’t enough time… And then there’s the fact that the children are growing up, and I like spending time with them. We do more things with them, they’re at an interesting age. We have lots of discussions, and that means fewer big dinners that end very late!

colombe campana

TSF

What is inspiring you at the moment?

Colombe

I spend a lot of time on Instagram looking at galleries and artists. Recently, I spotted Sarfo Emmanuel Annor, a South African photographer who specialises in portraiture in super-strong colours. I’m also very interested in figurative contemporary painting, like the work of Claire Tabouret. And I’ve always admired craftsmanship. Last year, I became obsessed with the Pichon factory, which makes these woven bowls in the south of France. I bought a lot of them all at once, especially on eBay…

TSF

Are there any pieces here that you’d like to tell us about?

Colombe

I have three paintings by Idir Davaine, two of which are hanging here, one in the dining room, the other in the small sitting room. He’s an artist I adore. I feel an affinity with his work around shapes and colours. Everyone sees what they want to see in his paintings… He explained to me that for him, the painting in the small sitting room represents a bead curtain.

TSF

The furniture is quite colourful, too.

Colombe

Capucine Puerari’s next-door neighbour was India Madhavi! So I became aware of her work and her use of bright, cheerful colours very early on, when I was in my twenties. Laura Gonzalez is also a very good friend of mine, and I love her green armchair. I’ve put it in my bedroom. As for the rest, we inherited lots of chairs from our parents, we were even given a sofa as a wedding present, the piano – it’s my daughter who plays it – we ended up with that after one of my childhood friends moved to Brazil… We salvage a lot here. And sometimes I fall in love, like with this little pair of stools with tiny backrests from CFOC in Paris.

TSF

Did the children have any special requests?

Colombe

No, the boys took over Gaïa’s cabin bed. They’re delighted! My daughter wanted a proper girl’s room.

TSF

What is your most recent acquisition?

Colombe

The very latest. I think it’s this little mouth and this little painting by Alma Vallé, a very young artist who does a lot of ceramics and painting. I really like these knife rests in the shape of colourful mouths, very delicate and full of poetry, and this page from an old book that she repainted and then framed. And just next to them, still on the mantelpiece, there’s a drawing by an artist I discovered on Instagram, Mary Eastman. I had visited the Hockney/Matisse exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Nice not long before. I must have been influenced by it (laughs)!

TSF

What’s your latest news?

Colombe

We’ve launched a household collection of tablecloths and placemats, which we’re continuing to develop. We’ve got quite a few collaborations coming on-stream in the spring, including one with K-Jacques that we started last year and which went down really well. And during the French Open, we have one with a sports brand called The Ace Club. And finally, there will be a new collaboration with Liberty.

TSF

What’s your favourite piece from The Socialite Family collection?

Colombe

I’ve been dreaming about the Mara shelves, which are so ingenious and modular, and I think it’s such a novel idea to put them behind a sofa as a little piece of occasional furniture!

TSF

What are your favourite places to visit in the neighbourhood?

Colombe

Debauve et Gallais, a delicious historic chocolate maker… and Clover on rue Perronet. I often have lunch there. It’s as beautiful as it is good, and the place is intimate and cheerful. Sisley in Rue du Bac: I go there for a facial or hair treatment – it’s the best way I know to feel good and leave feeling totally relaxed! Cordelia is a café and flower shop on rue du Bac. Cordelia has a gift for creating a warm, refined ambience. You can have a snack with your girlfriends or treat yourself to a pretty bouquet. Michelle Aragon on rue Jacob: You don’t always get a warm welcome, but it’s a feast for the eyes: agate-ware crockery, armchairs covered in antique kilims, antique household linen; it’s an Aladdin’s cave. Finally, Maison Fleuret, a tearoom that serves seasonal and vegetarian lunches in an old-fashioned bookshop atmosphere. At the Librairie 7L, I love hanging out there and bringing home a book on a photographer I’ve discovered by chance among their selection. Laura Gonzales, rue de Lille in Paris because she is a friend, and her creativity is equalled only by her terrific zest for life and her imagination. Her shop is just like her: colourful and cheerful.

From left to right, two of Colombe Campana's latest acquisitions: the ceramic knife holders shaped like colorful mouths and a page from an old book, repainted and framed, all created by the young artist Alma Vallé.

On the kitchen shelves, a porcelain box by the ceramist Laetitia Rouget.

On the kitchen shelves, a porcelain box by the ceramist Laetitia Rouget.

Recreate This Setting with Our Pieces
Related Story
lisa-gachet

Next Up

Lisa Gachet, Kevin Variengien, Suzanne, 2 years old and Lazare, 3 months old

Exclusive Design

Our pieces of furniture, lightings and accessories are all designed in Paris by our Design Studio. Timeless, elegant and functional pieces, designed to last.

Keep-forever European Quality

100% of our creations are crafted in top workshops across Italy, France, Portugal, and Central Europe, ensuring designs built to last.

Secure Payment

You can pay by credit card, paypal or bank transfer, in complete security and confidentiality.

Worldwide Shipping

We can ship in over 100 countries. All of our shipments are secure and managed by our carefully selected partners.