Step inside Zadig&Voltaire creative director Cecilia Bönström's breathtaking Parisian home

Cecilia Bönström is not one to dwell on the past. “Whatever happens, I always look forwards, I don’t look backwards,” she says. “Because I’m a born optimist.” The orange rearview mirror hanging in the front hall of her Paris home – a piece by French artist Georges Jouve – is purely ornamental. Bönström greets me in her foyer and we exchange air kisses from a safe distance. The creative director of quintessential French brand Zadig&Voltaire looks every bit the laid back Parisienne in a black cashmere hoodie, black lounge pants and short black Uggs, her blonde hair tousled just so. It is easy to forget that Bönström is from Gothenburg.

“I’m a 100 per cent Swedish,” she says. “But I think in my energy now, I’m half French.” She offers me a coffee and a croissant before giving me a quick zip around her two-floor apartment: 210 square metres of pure Parisian fantasy. When she first laid eyes on the space, freshly painted with the wooden floors newly redone, she saw her own steadfast optimism reflected back at her. “I felt very good vibes – positive vibes,” she says. “It felt like home, even though I hadn’t yet put my candles and my flowers.”

Related: Zadig&Voltaire's Cecilia Bönström blends Swedish practicality with Parisian cool

At 51 years old, this marks the very first time Bönström has had a place all her own. No partner telling her what art to hang or when she can or cannot host a spontaneous soiree. No siblings encroaching on hers pace . When Bönström says she has “never been alone,” she means it in the most literal, extreme sense of the phrase. “I was born an identical twin, so in the stomach I was with someone,” she says.

She moved to Paris to model after high school and “immediately” met a boyfriend who would become the father of her first two sons. She divorced and remarried shortly thereafter to Thierry Gillier, the founder and CEO of Zadig&Voltaire, with whom she shares her third son. And then, recently, she divorced again.

“It’s a big step to suddenly be alone. It’s a subject where people will say, ‘Oh la la, this woman alone at 50',” she says. “But I have to admit, it’s actually amazing to be able to live alone at 50. The freedom of a human being is to be happy with yourself.” It’s worth noting that down the hall is a children’s room, oft inhabited by her youngest son. Later this year, her eldest will be coming to stay for an extended visit.

We pass through the home’s main living space and step out into Bönström’s private garden. Tall squared hedges surround the yard, two sturdy stone benches the only furniture decorating this magical patch of greenery smack dab in the middle of the Sixteenth Arrondissement. To my right I can see the tippy top of the Eiffel Tower. Not a bad place for a fresh start.

“It’s funny... My whole life, I’ve been following my own instinct,” Bönström tells me as we settle into her deep olive green couch – a piece she designed herself. We place our coffee cups on the Axel Einar Hjorth-designed wooden table. I’ll come to learn that much of the furniture and artwork that fills Bönström’s home – from the Birgitta Watz vases to the Carl Hansen dining room chairs – are imported from Scandinavia. “One of the things that gave me strength and why I’m here today is that I never compared myself to anyone else, even as an identical twin.”

It’s advice worth following; Bönström’s instincts have taken her far. She grew up in Gothenburg, in a “normal, but not” Swedish middle class household, with parents who gave her “unconditional love, without words.” Her first modelling job was for the Swedish camera brand Hasselblad. “I was trembling,” she says. Then came Paris, where she was photographed by the likes of Oliviero Toscani and Hans Feurer. “Modelling is a great school of life,” she says, recounting how she would be whisked off, alone, to Reykjavik or Mallorca or Los Angeles for a shoot. “The client picks you up and then you’re in front of people, scrutinising you.”

At 33, with two children, she’d had it. “I cannot do this, I need to use my brain,” she told herself. And that’s when she reached out to Zadig&Voltaire. Among her model friends, Bönström had become the de facto stylist, imparting her rock and roll sensibilities on her cohorts by way of military jackets and “cool T-shirts”. She was at Zadig “every week,” purchasing looks on behalf of her girlfriends.

“Suddenly I say to myself, ‘Why don’t I call them up and propose my services,’” she recalls. In 2003, she was hired as an assistant and by 2006 she was creative director. Fifteen years later, the brand’s aesthetic – a mashup of Parisian bohemian and Swedish practicality – is a direct sartorial view of Bönström herself.

Bönström’s recent separation presented an unusual situation, given she and Gillier continue to work together. How does one move forward? “With a certain pride, you realise you have built a career because of your own personality, your own talent. You’ve built that.” She notes, accurately, that over the past 12 years she has spent more time with the members of her team than she has with anyone else. “They have become my family,” she says. Earlier this year, Zadig released a new handbag – a buttery leather offering with an extendable strap, its belt in the shape of a C. Parisian cool with Scandinavian functionality. Bönström’s team dubbed it ‘Le Cecilia’.

We take a break so the photographer can snap some portraits of Bönström. We had offered her a full team - hair, makeup, a stylist – but she declined, preferring instead to leave her hair natural and to do her own barely-there makeup. She selects her own looks: head-to-toe Zadig, natch. The overall impression is effortless, but it is simultaneously clear that every choice – down to the relaxed pose, honed from years in front of the camera – is deliberate.

In between setups, Bönström points out some of her favourite artworks in the house. There’s the lightbox with a photograph of horses running free by artist duo Elsa & Johanna, the twin paintings by Léo Dorfner, featuring tattooed legs and cigarettes. Her previous homes were brimming with blue chip works by Basquiat, Christopher Wool and Cy Twombly. Now she favours pieces by emerging artists – pieces she discovers herself at smaller art fairs and galleries.

I’m a Scandinavian girl with a very pure aesthetic and simple needs,” she says. “It’s very personal.” Lining the bench in her front hall are a set of ceramic animals, made by her 10-year-old son. Since Bönström is keen to look forward, I ask her what comes next. She has promised her team five more years at Zadig, during which time she will focus on growing the brand in Asia and the US. But what about in 10 years? “I will be 60,” she says, matter-of-factly.

“I’ve loved this rhythm that I’ve had since I was a student. I’ve been very energetic, running down the street. I don’t walk, I run. At 60, I hope I’ll have passed the job onto someone else. Fashion belongs to the youth,” she says, adding that she hopes to be doing more kundalini yoga, breathing and “listening to the birds.” In the meanwhile, she’s enjoying the simple pleasures in her Parisian oasis. “Life is great,” she says. “What do you need in life? A good glass of wine and a good friend.”