Desig House: Holiday Idea: La vie en rose

Interior designer Jocelyne Sibuet talks to Sophy Roberts about her enthusiasm for renovating and creating characterful hotels from Provence to the French Alps.

Subscribe today to House & Garden or download on your iPhone,iPad, Kindle Fire or Android device now.

Megève is a chocolate-box cliché of an Haute-Savoie ski village: a pretty square with a thirteenth-century, bulb-shape church tower, surrounded by relatively low-altitude peaks, the soft curves in winter peppered with picturesque pines. The resort is elegant, not flashy, and was made fashionable by the Rothschild family, who started coming here in the Twenties. Yet, the Alpine pastures are still farmed by farmers, while the town's iconic hotels - Les Fermes de Marie, L'Hotel Mont-Blanc and The Lodge Park - have been built by a local family. Jean Louis Sibuet converted the bones of each hotel, and his business partner, Jocelyne, did the interior design. Their first project, Au Coin du Feu, opened in 1981, though it wasn't until eight years later that the Sibuet name gained global traction, with the opening of Les Fermes de Marie, comprising 70 rooms in a cluster of nine old farmhouses. Now, Maisons & Hotels Sibuet is made up of 10 properties not just in Megève, but Val Thorens and Avoriaz, as well as Lyon, two hotels in Provence and one in St Tropez.

Look around the hotels...