Inside Yves Saint Laurent’s Former Home, Now a Dreamy Retreat in Tangier

Designer Jasper Conran transforms the iconic Moroccan villa into a serene 12-suite retreat for design and fashion lovers

By Ty Gaskins

April 28, 2025

Inside Yves Saint Laurents Former Home Now a Dreamy Retreat in Tangier

Photographer: Andrew Montgomery

There is a hush at Villa Mabrouka — a kind of curated stillness, scented faintly of floral, salt, and something faintly nostalgic, like vintage Guerlain perfume steeped in sunshine. Here, on the cliffside of Tangier, overlooking the straits where Europe and Africa trade glances across the sea, Yves Saint Laurent once found his escape. Today, it’s your turn.

The villa, whose name translates to House of Luck, has long existed at the intersection of myth and memory: Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé’s seaside sanctuary, their private world away from the intoxicating chaos of Paris and the opulent restraint of Marrakech. Now, it’s open to the rest of us—well, the lucky few who can book one of just 12 suites in what has become an immaculate, whisper-quiet, two-pool hideaway at the edge of the world.

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Its new steward is Jasper Conran, the British designer and seasoned hotelier who already coaxed a 17th-century riad in Marrakech into understated perfection. Conran approached Villa Mabrouka not as a palette to be splashed anew, but as a fragile relic to be resuscitated.

“Saint Laurent wanted it to reflect the elegance of his childhood in Oran,” Conran tells Vogue Arabia. “It’s glamorous in its purity and simplicity. Not a Moroccan palace—but a Mediterranean house with the gentle nuances of Morocco. A halcyon moment between the wars. A twinkle. A dazzle.”

If that sounds like something out of a Slim Aarons photo—good. That’s the vibe. But there’s more than fantasy here; there’s reverence. Conran didn’t gut the home. He excavated it. Painstakingly. What had been a private residence required complete rebuilding, from its corroded pipes to new structures discreetly added throughout the grounds. The original floor tiles remain; so do the soaring ceilings and the silhouette of the home’s former life.

The rooms hum in soft whites and quiet greens, cornflower blues and pale ochres—colors chosen not to compete with the setting but to defer to it. “The white is a relief from the heat,” says Conran, “and a contrast to the green of the garden.” The house is a lesson in control: Mauritanian rugs underfoot, slipper chairs in velvet, cashmere bed covers, and antique embroideries that feel less like decoration and more like punctuation. Every stitch and stripe whispers, never shouts.

Like Saint Laurent’s clothes, the house is structured but not stiff. Serious without losing sensuality. And just as every hem was once obsessed over in the atelier, so too are the rituals here: Conran designed the tableware, the linens, the furniture. He’s considered how your croissant will flake in the morning sun. “Effortlessness takes a lot of effort,” he admits. “I want guests to feel soothed, completely taken care of—but never overhandled. Everything should feel seamless.”

Indeed, Villa Mabrouka is not a hotel that begs to be Instagrammed, though you likely will. It’s a hotel that seduces slowly. It’s the kind of place where you start planning your return halfway through your stay. Maybe you’ll spend your days swimming in silence. Maybe you’ll wander Tangier’s sloping medina, channeling Paul Bowles and Talitha Getty. Or maybe you’ll just sit in the garden where Saint Laurent once read Cocteau and smoked in linen.

This is not a place to be seen. It’s a place to remember who you were before you needed to be. A fashion home reborn not with spectacle, but with soul.