Just as so many dream to do, but few dare, Esther Fresco and her husband Marcel dropped out of the rat race and bought a doer-upper in the South of France to renovate and turn into a B&B. So, how did it go? Esther Fresco doesn’t believe there’s only one career for everyone, so after years of being a high-flier in the fashion industry, she decided to turn her life upside down and start again. ‘I started to feel that the fashion and textile industry was polluting the world, and people were wanting cheaper and cheaper, clothes,’ she says.
‘There’s a challenge for the fashion world to make clothes more green, and get away from fast fashion, but I decided I wanted to channel my creativity elsewhere.’ So two years ago, Fresco one morning turned to her husband Marcel Trijselaar, who worked in IT, and said: ‘We’ve had one career, why don’t we have another one? Why don’t we leave our home in Holland and go somewhere warm, and renovate a property, and become B&B owners? A slower life, a nicer climate..
.what do you think?’. Trijselaar thought it sounded idyllic, so the couple began looking all over the South of France for a house they could buy, and turn into a project.
Fresco wanted to use her extensive knowledge of fabrics, colours, and shapes, and bring all of that to the renovation. This wouldn’t be simply a place for guests to lay their head, it would be stylish, modern yet cosy, too. ‘We wanted to buy a big home with land,’ says Fresco, ‘and after l.