Inside Carolina Irving’s coastal retreat secluded on Portugal’s west coast

[mellow music]

[Carolina] This little house is

in a village called Melides

which is in the Alentejo region of Portugal.

It's on the edge of a rice field that ends in a lagoon,

and then you have the beach.

The rice field is incredibly beautiful

because at all times of the year it changes.

Right now the green is a fluorescent green.

It's absolutely amazing.

I've noticed throughout the years

that I think the most successful interiors

are the ones that tell a very personal story.

My parents are Venezuelan, but I grew up in Paris,

so our house was always a little bit formal,

and I think in a reaction to that,

I went completely the other way.

Whole world changed aesthetically.

When I saw Christopher Gibbs' house,

this is exactly the mix of things that I love.

[mellow music]

I couldn't build a really big house

because it's very protected land.

I could only build 90 square meters,

which seemed very small to me at the beginning,

and now I love it.

We had a tiny kitchen before,

so we've made it a little bit bigger

and it's really changed our lives,

and we decided to just do it all in wood and be very rustic.

I love the fact that it's an open kitchen,

very simple with a counter that's just unpolished marble.

The hanging lamps are from Pooky Lights.

The plates on top are totally Portuguese,

very traditional from a factory

which still exists called Bordello Pineiro.

[mellow music]

So there are lots of very Portuguese things here.

For instance, the ceramic sconces are typical from here,

and I loved that kind of mustardy yellow.

Portuguese have a fantastic weaving tradition.

There's some really amazing textiles.

Then it goes very well with that kind of William and Mary,

black and white table.

I like to mix kind of high and low,

and I don't want things to be too prissy or sophisticated.

So on the table is actually an outdoor fabric.

The plates are from a collection

that I do with my daughters, Olympia and Ariadne.

This is a corner that I particularly like.

It's like a little altar.

The tiles here, which I absolutely love,

they were made by a friend of mine in Seville

called Patricia Medina.

15th century tiles, but they're reproductions,

but she's managed to make them exactly the same

as the ones in the Casa de Pilatos in Seville,

and they are really incredible.

They're completely handmade.

When I was about 22, 23, I moved to New York

and I went to Sotheby's for a bit,

and then I started working for various decorating magazines.

I also worked for House and Garden,

the US version for 10 years, which was great.

I was so obsessed with fabrics and I thought,

I'm not really finding what I like.

And in 2007 I started my own textile business.

In a sitting room I like having

different little sort of conversation corners.

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I always wanted to have a long banquette,

like in ottoman houses.

So we thought, let's just do as much

as we can built in furniture.

It's very comfortable.

My one big indulgence was the floor.

It was the sort of luxurious thing.

It has this beautiful emerald green.

Each tile is different.

It's made in Setúbal by this company called [indistinct].

My favorite thing in the world

that I've had for more than 25 years,

it's followed me everywhere, it's huge Gunnera leaves.

Obviously they were bright green,

and over the years they've bleached

and become tobacco color,

and I think they're even more beautiful

because they look like a Japanese screen.

I love collecting things from nature.

Interesting stones that I find wherever I go,

I just pick them up and take them with me.

When I'm here, I always sit on that yellow sofa,

which is my Ikea sofa that I love.

I just literally made a slip cover with the pleats,

and it's incredibly comfortable.

This room is really everything that I like

and I buy and I see, and I just hang it on the walls.

This big dish is Spanish, and I think it's a really old one,

and it's a technique that

I think maybe only two people still do today with a spoon.

This one up there is a Hungarian

18th century plate with the tulips.

These are four tiles that were made now

by my ceramicist in Spain.

And he said, oh, well, let's try it,

and I just glued them, the four of them together.

I thought they looked quite good.

This is a really tiny bedroom.

So I thought putting the bed right in the middle of the room

was actually quite nice

[mellow music]

and then you're lying down

and have this fantastic view here.

And the bathroom behind is all kind of built in.

The shower, the loo,

and then you have the little sink in the middle.

So everything needed to fit.

And what's wonderful here is that

the rice fields change every season

and the storks will come.

I mean hundreds of them,

and you just watch for hours,

and I had one that was starting to nest

on the top of that tree

and then I think she didn't like it wasn't big enough,

so she left,

but I had her for about four days, so I was ecstatic.

Usually I like bedrooms that are very cozy,

but here I had no choice because of the size of it.

So again, everything had to fit.

So behind the headboard is the bathroom,

but we thought it was a good idea

to take it all the way up to the ceiling,

almost like a half wall.

And I thought it was nice

to just keep the walls just whitewashed

and use a minimal amount of fabric.

Bertrand's my husband.

He's French and he's a journalist.

I'm very lucky that Bertrand likes everything I like.

So that's a good thing.

And he's also obsessed with nature and fishing.

So anything that has a fish

or something of the sea, he collects.

[mellow music]

Outside, we created all of these outdoor spaces

so that we could, depending on the heat or the wind,

we'd have somewhere to sit.

In this part of the garden I wanted things to be quite low

because I don't want to have the view interrupted.

I wanted it to be one kind of a continuous thing.

This is my little paradise.

Here it's really cool.

So when it's hot we have lunch here or we have coffee here.

The end of the day in the afternoon,

I just lie down here and read for hours or fall asleep

or on that bed over there.

I think we keep changing things in the house

every time and improving things.

I don't like it when a house is finished.

I think there should always be something

that you're longing to have or making things better.

So as far as I'm concerned,

I mean, it can go on and on.

I'll still be here.

[waves crashing]