Swish Château: an interior designer to the jet set creates a plush sanctuary in the city

Swish Château: an interior designer to the jet set creates a plush sanctuary in the city


Great Spaces: Swish Château

For 25 years, Lori Morris has designed fantasy-inducing estates all over the world—a sprawling mountain lodge in Montana, an ancient house in ­Jerusalem, an oceanfront beach property on the Gulf of Mexico. The hectic, travel-heavy lifestyle made her crave a waterfront retreat of her own. ­Walking around her Etobicoke neighbourhood in 2003, she came across a terraced neo-Georgian row house on the lakefront and had to have it. Problem was, it wasn’t for sale. She waited five years for it to come on the market and scooped it up the moment it did. In ­February 2008 she took possession and got to work turning the 2,500-square-foot property into her own private escape. She was inspired by French châteaus she’d ­visited on buying trips and indulged herself with the same luxuries as her clients: custom furnishings; antiques collected from France, Italy and ­England; ornate chandeliers; and enough rococo gilding to make Marie Antoinette blanch. She also updated the look to satisfy her 21st-­century tastes. She stripped the house down to the studs, added grand archways to open up the space and crowned the rooms with custom millwork she designed herself. The result is an over-the-top hideaway that serves as her own Petit ­Trianon in Mimico. Her favourite room is her ­bedroom—she calls the rest of the house “the long hallway to my bedroom.”