For the women who taught me to gather — and for all of us who must remember how in a lonely age.

A Founder’s Reflection

When I was a little girl, I was obsessed with France. I’m not sure where this obsession began — probably as for many little girls, in the beautiful animated films of Walt Disney. Sleeping Beauty was my favorite, and each time I watched it (on repeat, well into my 8th, 9th, and 10th years), I was whisked into Renaissance French aesthetics.

But my fascination with beauty and gathering didn’t start with castles or fairytales. I had already seen in my mother’s way of being that beauty, atmosphere, and presence could change people. She cultivated these gifts constantly — setting spaces with care, tending to atmosphere, hosting conversations, and gathering people together. She has devoted her life to deeply seeing people and holding space for their journeys. From her, I learned that those gifts — presence, listening, and honoring another’s unfolding — were more important than the cut-and-dry rules of the world.

By the time I was 14, my obsession had turned to real France. As the internet was just taking off, I found myself scouring rudimentary real estate sites listing castles for sale across Europe. I was hooked. I would pore over the grainy photos for hours, even printing out my favorites to carry with me on the school bus.

Eventually, I managed to convince my family to take an epic five-week trip to France. It was our first international trip together, and I planned it in full: Paris, the Loire Valley, and finally the southwest countryside — not far from where we live now.

One stop on that journey changed me forever: Château de Chenonceau. The castle itself, spanning the river with its endless leaded windows glimmering over water, was breathtaking. But it was the exhibit on the Queens of the Château that truly shifted something in me. There I encountered Catherine de Medici, Diane de Poitiers, Louise Dupin — women of passion, intellect, and vision, who created culture and wielded influence not through armies, but through art, ideas, and gatherings.

The exhibit planted the seed for what would eventually become Lady of the Château. Our logo, our muse, and even our mission are a distillation of these women — a homage not only to queens, mistresses, wives, and daughters who dared to shape the worlds around them, but also to my own mother, who modeled these values daily in our home. The Lady is all of them and none of them — a guiding spirit that evokes the lineage of women who cultivate culture through beauty, conversation, and community.

My mother, Maruca, and I left that trip so inspired by the Ladies of Chenonceau — and especially the idea of the salons hosted by Louise Dupin — that we began researching the wider history of salons in France.

The Power of the Salonnière

The history of the French salon is, at its core, a history of cultural female leadership. Nowhere else in the world at that time did women hold such influence over the currents of thought.

The first recognized salon opened in 1588, and astonishingly, the tradition endured in an unbroken sequence all the way to 1991. For over five centuries, salons shaped French cultural life — stretching across monarchies, revolutions, empires, and modern republics.

As Peter Watson notes in The French Mind:

“For many, the salons of 17th-century Paris were the high point of existence, the pinnacle of what was felt to be a new civilisation, the most exciting, pleasurable, and intellectually satisfying way of life that could be imagined. The salon experience was intoxicating.”

Contemporaries recognized it too. One visitor declared of the legendary Hôtel de Rambouillet:

“One day at the Hôtel de Rambouillet is worth more than several centuries elsewhere.”

Salonnières like Madame Geoffrin, Madame de Staël, and Madame Necker shaped entire eras. They weren’t simply pouring wine or offering hospitality. They were curators of ideas, conveners of genius, and tastemakers who could make or break reputations. They provided safe havens where manuscripts were read aloud, arguments tested, and revolutionary plots whispered into being.

To run a salon was to hold immense cultural power: influencing literary tastes, sparking revolutions, and seeding movements. It was radical — a model of feminine authority expressed not through armies or governments, but through intellect, wit, and grace.

✨ The Setting of the Salon

Salons were held in the homes of the salonnières — intimate yet beautifully decorated spaces that blended the personal with the universal. In the 17th century, it even became a tradition for hostesses to welcome their guests from a daybed, reclining as they received philosophers, poets, and politicians.

This mingling of domesticity and public discourse was radical: a private interior transformed into the stage for culture, ideas, and revolution.

At Lady of the Château, we take inspiration from this intermingling. Our salons and retreats, too, are personal — infused with beauty, comfort, and intimacy — yet universal, offering a stage where ideas and creativity unfold in community.

Salons as Creative Incubators

These gatherings were far more than elegant parties. They were living laboratories of culture:

• A refuge from the rigid constraints of court or the chaos of the street.

• A stage where artists and philosophers tested their newest works.

• A crucible where debates flared, softened, and reshaped themselves into new visions of society.

The roll call of those who passed through salons is dazzling: writers like Molière, Balzac, Racine, Montesquieu, Victor Hugo, Flaubert, George Sand, Baudelaire, Maupassant, Proust, T.S. Eliot, and Rilke; painters like Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Henri Matisse; composers like Chopin and Debussy; and innovators like Pasteur, Jules Verne, and Salvador Dalí.

Even political and transatlantic figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Picasso, and Buñuel found themselves drawn into these salons — exchanging ideas, reading aloud, debating, and dreaming.

In fact, almost every major French literary, artistic, and political figure of the last five centuries is contained within the history of these salons. To sit in one was to brush shoulders with genius — and to feel that your voice, too, could shape the world.

📜 Voices from the Salons

• Louise Dupin (1706–1799): “It is conversation that equalizes us, that lifts us above the accidents of birth or fortune.”

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who often visited Dupin’s salon: “Madame Dupin was the only woman who ever completely won my heart, and whose memory I have always cherished.”

• Madame de Staël (1766–1817): “The search for truth is in one sense the story of conversation itself.”

These words remind us that salons were never just social gatherings. They were places where the act of coming together became culture-making in its own right — a truth that still resonates at Lady of the Château today.

Creative Connection as Power

The importance of these salons lies in the reminder that creative connection is itself a form of power. Culture is not made only in studios, laboratories, or parliaments — it is made in gatherings, in conversation, in the interplay of perspectives.

At Lady of the Château, we see ourselves as part of this long lineage. Our retreats and gatherings are not replicas of salons, but they are inspired by them. Each time we bring people together — artists, writers, thinkers, seekers — we are crafting a space that values both brilliance and vulnerability, both conversation and silence, both the personal and the collective.

Like the salonnières of history, we wear many hats: curator, host, mediator, muse. And like them, we know that the magic doesn’t come from us alone. It comes from the guests, the exchange, the risk-taking, and the willingness to bring one’s true self into the room.

🌿 Practice: Hosting with the Spirit of the Salon

If you’re gathering people — around a table, in a studio, or within a business — ask yourself:

1. Who needs to be in the room? Not just the obvious experts, but the unexpected voices that spark cross-pollination.

2. What atmosphere will unlock sharing? Salons weren’t lectures; they were intimate, playful, and conversational.

3. How will you hold the balance? The salonnière’s art was orchestration — ensuring no one dominated, and everyone left changed.

The Salon as a Remedy for Our Times

Today, culture faces a different challenge. We are more “connected” than ever online, yet more isolated than ever in our daily lives. So many of us live inside the bubbles of our algorithms — scrolling, liking, and engaging with communities that feel close, but rarely meet us face-to-face.

In this context, the simple act of gathering in person, of sitting across from someone in conversation, has become almost radical. To put down the phone, look into another’s eyes, and exchange ideas without distraction is to reclaim a kind of human intimacy that our culture is steadily losing.

This is why the spirit of the salon matters now more than ever. Salons remind us that conversation itself can be culture-making, that presence is power, and that true connection cannot be outsourced to screens. They offer us a model for how to resist isolation — by gathering, by listening, by daring to share our inner worlds aloud.

At Lady of the Château, this is our work. To create spaces where people don’t just pass each other by, but truly meet. Where conversation is not background noise, but the main event. Where ideas and imaginations spark against one another, and where, for a moment, we see and feel seen.

Closing Reflection

For me, the legacy of the salonnières is not a static history lesson, but a living inspiration. It reminds me that culture is shaped not only by what we create individually, but by what we nurture together.

At Lady of the Château, this is our ongoing experiment: to hold space where beauty, conversation, and self-discovery meet — and to trust that something larger than any one of us will emerge.

Like the women who walked Chenonceau’s halls, and like my mother, Maruca, who continues to model these gifts, I believe the most powerful legacies are not built in solitude, but in community. And when we gather with openness, courage, and imagination — we are reminded: this is how life can and should be.