Installed in 2019 in this perch overlooking the Atomium and the gardens of the castle of Laeken, Victoire and Romain nevertheless thought, at the beginning, that making their nest there would remain a dream, this apartment being a priori beyond their means. That was without counting on the alchemy operating between them and the owners, who preferred the couple to more bidding buyers and entrusted them with this light-filled duplex. Nestled in a building dating from 1825 that has been carefully renovated, the interior is impeccably renovated. However, it is the exterior that immediately seduces Victoire: ” The day we visited the apartment, there was a thick fog. We couldn’t see anything except the shadow of the forest in the distance and the silhouette of a church whose bell tower we could barely make out. It really felt like a haunted castle, it was magical… Here, we enjoy the seasons, we sleep with the birds, we are literally in the sky. “A place with which the writer feels in tune:” Before we moved here, we lived in a very modern apartment. This one is much more like us: its old creaky floorboards, its views of the sky and trees make it much more organic, earthy and sensual. » A sensuality that we find in her predilection for wooden furniture from the 1950s, whose angles and curves she appreciates, and which she has recently liked to mix with brutalism.
From a tastefully renovated blank space, a blank page to fill with their desires, Victoire and Romain have made a cocoon sheltering their shared passion for books, omnipresent. When they arrived, these two literary souls had to build a huge library that could accommodate their countless works. Running from floor to ceiling on either side of the fireplace, it was built by Romain and his father. The true heart of the house, among other pens, rub shoulders: ” Milan Kundera, for whom Romain has a passion, Hélène Cixous, or Alejandra Pizarnik, an Argentinian poet, a goddess in the pantheon of my favourite writers. “. Nour is not to be outdone, the library in her room being rich with an enviable collection dedicated to young people, which includes works by Nathalie Parain, Fredun Shapur, Fanny Dreyer, Mélanie Rutten and Bernadette Gervais. For Victoire, who writes as much for children as for adults and has just published with Cambourakis The Bison No-No (magnificently illustrated by Marine Schneider), children’s literature is a passion that she takes undeniable pleasure in sharing with her mischievous and talkative 2-year-old boy, to whom she reads stories every day.
His toys are for him, but they mean a lot to me too, because I take part in his games every day.
Raised by an art historian mother and an antique dealer father, Victoire inherited their aesthetic streak, but was careful to let Nour handle the objects around her, something she was not allowed to do as a child: ” My father had made our house a museum filled with works of art and antiques that we were not allowed to touch. Everything was sublime but frozen. I was able to remain faithful to this taste for beautiful objects, while accepting that with Nour, things are perpetually in motion. Besides, he always ends up putting them back in their place, I think I passed on to him the taste for tidying up. » Having followed her father in his wanderings as an antique dealer, Victoire inherited his taste for thrifting, running around the emblematic flea market on Place du Jeu de Balle as a teenager. She also unearths treasures of vintage toys on the web, being keen for Nour to handle beautiful objects. She also confides that she gives them more and more importance: ” I overheard a conversation a few years ago. A young girl said she only had objects at home that were full of history: everything, from the plate to the furniture, had been given to her by someone dear, had been found or inherited; nothing was neutral, mass-produced, bought in a hurry in a supermarket. This had intrigued me, and had made me question my own objects, which I began to look at differently. Since then, I think that Romain and I have been tending towards this sort of ideal: having at home (almost) only objects that say things about their origins, about the hands that made or offered them. It is not an inexcusable rule, nor an imperative, rather a way of feeling fully supported at home, of placing meaning in the acquisition of all things. » Most of Nour’s toys come from artisans whose work Victoire follows with passion and admiration: ” His toys are for him, but they mean a lot to me too, because I take part in his games every day and because they are part of our visual field for all three of us.. »
As precise in her quest for the objects that surround her as in that of the words she chooses, this collector at heart adds that, when she is interested in something, she does so to the extreme, digging into her research of objects, toys, ceramics or works to the point of excellence: ” A criterion of excellence that belongs only to me, of course, to my aesthetic, sensory research of quality of the material. I compare for hours, discovering artisans and artists. I am interested in what they do, but also in who they are. » Some of them have also become friends, which explains why the interior of Victoire and Romain is composed of many works by people close to them. Like the painting above the fireplace, a gift from the young artist Carole Ebtinger, or the tapestry in the dining room, by Brussels native Elise Peroi. A creation composed especially for them, it represents the trio formed with Nour: ” I think it suits us well. We find this idea of home, of greenery, of organic, of hands. »
Hands, another fascination of the writer: “ They remind me of the relationship to touch, to the sensory… I have a collection of them that was created de facto… » His latest book is also called The Palm Bigger Than You. A collection of intimate poems evoking her experience of motherhood, it resonates with many readers. No doubt because, as she writes: ” In the very personal experience of these nine months inside and then outside, we find resonances, connections, an astonishing observation of universality. » The rhyme lover that she is likes to borrow this quote from the African-American poet Audre Lorde: « Poetry is a true sublimation of experience. “And this is precisely what Victoire aspires to when she writes: to sublimate the everyday and experience. Which she does masterfully, having the gift of making the smallest fragment of life lyrical.
