Yahoo Finance From D&G's fridge to Versace's playroom: the designers bringing fashion to interiors
Some fashion designers’ homes have become almost as famous as the garments they make. From Yves Saint Laurent’s cobalt-blue Villa Oasis in Marrakesh to Gianni Versace’s grandly baroque Villa Casa Casuarina in Miami (complete with a gold swimming pool), it would be impossible to separate the interiors from the personalities that made them.
Few successful fashion designers make the leap from decorating their own houses to designing spaces for other people, however. Tomasz Starzewski is one of them. Best known for discreetly dressing women, including Margaret Thatcher and Princess Diana, he started on an interiors path when a fashion client asked him to decorate their country house over four months.
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His latest interiors project can be seen at Marylebone’s Chiltern Place development, for which he created the communal spaces as well as a chic apartment, full of details that tread the line between fashion and interiors. His credentials are more solid than most fashion designers, he explains: “I’m a bit different in that my dad was an architect and I worked for him while I was a student. I know how to draw an elevation.”
Lisa Ronson of developer Ronson Capital Partners was looking for something different, too. “We looked at a lot of presentations from top interior architects, and they felt very much the same,” she says. “We wanted something a bit out of the box.”
Textiles naturally play a large role in his scheme, from the cocooning suede- and linen-lined walls to the shaggy lamb’s wool that effervesces out of the black lacquer vintage dining chairs. His workroom made the curtains, the borders of which are sewn with bright red chenille thread, like a supersized tacking stitch on a garment. He also commissioned the embroidery on the cushions from the same Indian supplier he uses for his fashion work (who also works for Armani and Valentino).
“I don’t use print in my fashion, and that’s another thing that has carried through,” says Starzewski. Instead, the visual interest comes from the variety of textures, as well as distinctive furniture pieces that he designed himself. Sixties gouache paintings that were the original artwork for Hermès’ famous scarves grace the living room walls, and tribal jewellery has been mounted on stands in one of the bedrooms – fashion repurposed as objets d’art.
Starzewski is not the only designer crossing over. Bella Freud, best known for her irreverent slogan knitwear, is teaming up with architectural salvage expert Retrouvius to furnish a three-bedroom apartment at Television Centre, the former headquarters of the BBC in London’s White City.
Sitting atop the Helios Building (better known as the “doughnut” back in the BBC days), the apartment’s design is an intriguing prospect: Freud’s pop-punk attitude and Retrouvius’s intuitive ability to reinvent old materials and objects for new spaces. It will be unveiled in early summer.
Then there are the big guns: global fashion houses that have turned into “lifestyle brands”. Roberto Cavalli Home Interiors has completed a one-bedroom apartment at developer St George’s Chelsea Creek site. “Cavalli is known for being bold, individual and uncompromising,” says Theo Mance, managing director of Kings of Chelsea, the London showroom that’s an exclusive supplier of Roberto Cavalli homewares, and which furnished the flat.
He’s not wrong: fur, animal print and an opulent interpretation of luxury are the signature looks, although for Chelsea Creek, that has been toned down, with a palette of cream, soft beige and champagne gold that sounds a calmer note. “There are elements of the more luxurious out-there Cavalli style, but we have tamed it so it’s more acceptable to the taste of London, rather than, say, Cannes or Istanbul,” says Mance. “It’s not like everything has to be in a jaguar print. We can take the DNA, and tailor it.”
With luxury brands that have their own interiors line, such as Armani and Fendi, there’s not always a cross-fertilisation of ideas, but Mance says that Roberto Cavalli Home Interiors is closer than most to the catwalk. “We’ve had people come in to the showroom and say that the finish on a sofa is the same as they already have on a handbag, or on their shoes. If you’re a follower of the fashion brand, you’ll recognise some of those tropes.”
Branded real estate is the next step in the fashion/interiors crossover, with big names licencing their logos – and their design prowess – to entire developments. Aykon London One is a 50-floor tower forming part of the redevelopment of Nine Elms, which includes the new US embassy.
When it opens in 2020, its interiors will be courtesy of Versace, including the lobby, gym and outdoor spaces. Middle Eastern developer DAMAC Properties is at the helm, a pioneer of branded real estate in Dubai. It has already collaborated with Fendi, Bugatti and Trump, among others.
Middle Eastern investors snapped up the phase one release of homes, and it will not be long before Versace-clad children will be playing on the Versace-designed, brightly coloured slides in the children’s play area, with a dynamite view of the city.
A more affordable way to bring some sartorial style to your own interior is to buy homewares created by a fashion label. Most of the luxury ateliers now have their own interiors lines, with Gucci launching a range last summer that was every bit as riotously colourful as its clothes, and Dior unveiling Dior Maison when it reopened its London showroom in 2016.
The Rug Company has been collaborating with fashion designers for much longer than that, though, and they have provided the flooring firm with some of its most recognisable designs. “Our first stand-alone collection with a collaborating designer was with the fashion brand Marni,” says Christopher Sharp, the company’s founder. “The designs were unlike anything we’d seen before – beautiful, colourful prints that we knew instantly would bring an entirely new aesthetic value to handmade rugs.”
Work followed with names such Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, Jonathan Saunders, Rodarte, Elie Saab and Paul Smith. “Each one brings something original and unexpected to our collections. The best fashion designers are masters of print and colour and many of our successful designs demonstrate their genius to combine these two elements with startling effect,” says Sharp.
Emily Johnson, co-founder of British ceramics company 1882 Ltd, found the same thing when she worked with fashion designer Peter Pilotto to create a range of plates, with hand-painted swirls of colour that are every bit as carefree as the clothes he designs. “Peter has an incredible ability with pattern and colour, and he put forward designs with colours that are somewhat alien to the traditional potter,” she says. “This is the beauty of these collaborations, as each designer approaches things so differently. While we are harnessing years of industrial craft skill, they are injecting innovative design.”
For something with more of a tailored feel, Raf Simons’ textile collections for Danish company Kvadrat are inspired by fabrics more usually found in fashion, such as tweeds and bouclés. Having initially designed these textiles for homewares, Simons has subsequently used them in his garments – the line between fashion and interiors not just blurred, but dissolved.
