Villa Dubochet

A child of the party

Born in Thonon during the Second World War, Dad Régné arrived in Montreux as a refugee, with his grandmother, mother and sister; his father, an officer, died in France. First a precision mechanic, he became a self-taught decorator and opened a shop on the Rue de Bourg in Lausanne. Everything changed in the 1960s when the singer Adamo entrusted him with decorating his house and a studio in Belgium: a friendship formed, doors opened.

The king of nightclubs

“At one time, three quarters of the nightclubs in Lausanne had been decorated by my father” recalls his son Patrick. He turned the Darling into a garden of ancient Rome, furnished the Snob with giant bellows for tables, and recreated a Paris metro station in Oron-le-Châtel. Layering antiques, centuries and styles, drawing on Dalí and Magritte, he also collected horse-drawn carriages, more than forty in all, out of a taste for old-world living.

The villa and its stars

In his villa in the Dubochet estate, in Clarens, set up in a former casino, Dad Régné installed his private discotheque and gathered the night-time who’s who of Montreux. When the orchestra, which played from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., wanted a break, it would call out from the stage: “The orchestra is thirsty!”

A panel covered with signatures kept the memory of the friends who came through: the Rolling Stones, Queen, Grace Jones, the jazz pianist Bill Evans, the singers Patrick Juvet, Salvatore Adamo, Julien Clerc, Véronique Sanson, Léo Ferré and Michel Legrand, the duo Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll, the keyboardist Patrick Moraz, the comedians Thierry Le Luron and Olivier Lejeune, the actor Jean-Pierre Cassel and Gérard Leclerc.

Adamo, a forty-year friendship

His friendship with Salvatore Adamo, formed in Montreux, lasted more than forty years. In an RTS report where the singer accompanies his friend, Adamo recalls that Dad “never hesitated to drive hundreds of kilometres to come and see me”. As early as the 1960s he had entrusted him with decorating his house and a studio in Belgium.

When Adamo’s father wanted to open a restaurant-club in Sicily, in Marina di Ragusa, it was Dad he called on. Named “La Notte” after one of the singer’s songs, the place has stayed in the memory of the Sicilians.

The Rolling Stones and the Dali night

It was in Montreux, in 1964, that Dad and Adamo met: the singer was recording a television show featuring the Rolling Stones, and Dad, whom he did not yet know, invited him to his villa that very evening. “It was moving to find myself facing the Rolling Stones, in a friendly atmosphere,” Adamo recalls.

The villa’s parties held surprises. Dad liked to tell how, one night around three in the morning, among dozens of guests, a man came up and introduced himself: “My name is Salvador Dali.” A fervent admirer of the painter, whose work inspired his décors, the decorator kept an unforgettable memory of it.

Grace Jones and the white Lamborghini

His story with Grace Jones began with a refusal. Asked to fetch the singer’s white Lamborghini from Geneva airport, “painted with an axe” as her hairstyle was then, Dad first said no: it was “not at all” his style. The organiser of the Vevey comedy film festival eventually convinced him.

He had no cause to regret it: the two became very close and had a relationship. Grace Jones was later the headliner of the Alcazar’s revival, in 1990.

The Alcazar saga

Having come to negotiate door fittings in a building of the Grand Hôtel de Territet, Dad Régné discovered a forgotten hall there and fell in love with it. He bought it, restored it and founded a restaurant, a museum for his collection of carriages and sedan chairs, and the Théâtre de l’Alcazar. Ravaged by a fire in 1984, the place was reborn in 1990 with Grace Jones as headliner, before a second fire, in 2012, hastened its decline. The carriage museum has now disappeared and the theatre no longer belongs to him. See the Théâtre de l’Alcazar page.

The guardian of heritage

An aesthete and collector, Dad Régné was also a tireless defender of Montreux’s heritage. He is credited in particular with saving the Marché couvert: he founded the defence committee and drove the popular vote that prevented its demolition. President for some thirty years of the Association for the protection of Montreux’s sites, he died on 18 February 2023, a few months short of his 82nd birthday. “He left his mark on the Montreux nights, and on the days too,” says former mayor Laurent Wehrli (24 heures ↗).