Morocco by design: Jasper Conran has transformed Yves Saint Laurent’s villa in Tangier into an exquisite hotel – the latest chic outpost in a city back to its best

Few pleasures can compare to waking up in the bedroom of the great late designer Yves Saint Laurent in Tangier, Morocco, and breathing in the scent of the sea and late summer.

I’m staying at Jasper Conran’s fantastic new hotel Villa Mabrouka. It means luck in Arabic – and the fortune is all mine.

The bedroom overlooks a two-hectare garden and a place where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean Sea. A fleet of small fishing boats chugs along the ghostly contours of Spain. On a clear day you can see Trafalgar.

While I enjoy smoked salmon and fresh peaches in the privacy of my colonial-style terrace, other guests below me have breakfast under green and white umbrellas. I can’t hear them and I can barely see them because of the tumbling passion flowers and wisteria.

With its flowing muslin curtains I could imagine myself in Italy, the Caribbean or even the south of France – when Somerset Maugham called it ‘a sunny place for shady people’. And that, Jasper later explains, is exactly the atmosphere he wanted to create.

The legendary ‘white city’ of Tangier, pictured above, is named for its sparkling facades against the eternally blue sky, Glenys reveals

It’s a description that could just as easily apply to Tangier itself, with its reputation for bohemian living. Poets, painters, rock stars and millionaires like Woolworths heiress Barbara Hutton have had a blast in the legendary ‘white city’, named for its sparkling facades against the eternally blue sky.

But Tangier, on Morocco’s northwest coast, almost opposite Gibraltar, has changed. It now feels like a European city – multilingual and multicultural with restaurants, nightclubs and safe shopping in the souk.

The begging and bargaining is over. Modern hotels line the coastal road – a Waldorf Astoria is in the works and now there is Villa Mabrouka, where French-Algerian designer YSL spent his last days with his business partner and lover Pierre Berge.

The last time I was in the villa was shortly after the designer’s death, fifteen years ago. While everyone else drank champagne, Berge sat alone under a palm tree, no doubt lost in memories of how his talented protégé had conquered the world with his beautiful materials and cross-dressing styles.

The two had bought the 1940s modernist villa in 1997 from an Arab princess, who in turn had bought it from an American cigarette smuggler. YSL and Berge first lived in Marrakech, but Tangier, with its cooler climate, was where they wanted to retire.

The pair enlisted Paris’s most fashionable interior designer, Jacques Grange, to renovate it, architect Stuart Church to build a legendary green grotto pool, and American landscape artist Madison Cox to landscape the gardens. But after Berge’s death six years ago, the iconic villa stood empty while everyone feared for its future.

So, with my heart in my mouth, I walked through the busy, whitewashed streets until I came across the discreet hotel door. Jasper was waiting for me, dressed in patriotic white and blue with red socks.

As the son of Habitat entrepreneur Terence Conran and bestselling author Shirley, Jasper was actually visited by the good fairy at birth. He inherited the family talent, plus a generous dose of charm and a fragile appearance. He designs ballets and operas and recently created the beautiful cream-coloured outfit worn by Princess Margaret’s daughter Sarah Chatto at the King’s coronation.

Villa Mabrouka has 12 suites named after Moroccan cities. Above you see the Marrakech suite

The property was bought by British designer Jasper Conran for a reported £4 million. Pictured here is the bathroom of the Marrakech suite

Excellent: Upstairs is the hotel corridor

Jasper reportedly paid £4 million for Villa Mabrouka. The money will go to the YSL Foundation, which helps rebuild Morocco’s destroyed mountain villages.

First he takes me to the roof terrace, where the striped furniture looks out at the setting sun. Then a tour of the entire property, with its 12 suites named after Moroccan cities. Building six new villas in the garden meant excavating the entire Madison landscape to install new plumbing and electrical cables. Jasper has replaced all the plants and added new ones.

We continue, past the famous swimming pool, some dramatic natural waterfalls, three gazebos for private dining and a new year-round heated plunge pool, and then back to my exquisite room to get dressed for dinner.

There’s no better place to treat yourself than here, but you’ll feel just as at home in one of Tangier’s many charming – and much cheaper – guesthouses.

I have driven through all of Morocco, from Dakhla in the far south to rose-red Marrakech and old Fez. I’ve skied in Ifrane and baked in the desert – but I always come back to Tangier, which is just a three-hour flight from London.

Over the centuries it has been subject to so many influences that it is impossible to get enough of it. Berber, Arabic, Roman, African, Spanish, French, Portuguese and, yes, English.

‘There’s no better place to treat yourself than here,’ says Glenys of Villa Mabrouka, which boasts an outdoor terrace with panoramic sea views, pictured here

Above, Yves Saint Laurent with model Claudia Schiffer at a fashion show in 1996

The friendliness of the locals, their cheerfulness and resourcefulness, their respect for young and old, is the main attraction that attracts me. I’ve seen it grow from a dirty, dusty place with unpaved streets into a real working city with a bookshop and a bar on every corner, new cinemas where films open earlier than in London, and state-of-the-art hospitals.

As for the hordes of cats, they are revered – not least because the Prophet Mohammed loved them so much that he once cut his cloak in half rather than let one fall asleep.

All these things were going through my mind as I fell asleep in my bedroom at Villa Mabrouka, lulled by the cashmere blankets, linen sheets – and no TV to disturb the peace. There is no device in the hotel, but there is an unexpectedly good internet connection.

The next morning dawned clear and blue, and as I prepared to leave I took one last look at the hotel. For a YSL fan like me, it’s great to know that the maestro’s memory is in good hands.

And as I said a fond farewell to Jasper, I saw that the Berge palm tree had survived the new planting. By a trick of the light I thought I caught a glimpse of the old man himself sitting contentedly underneath, and next to him an equally happy YSL.