This Fashion Designer’s Home Is a Secret Garden Fever Dream

In a watery bit of Hampshire, in a beautiful village surrounded by meandering chalk streams and flood meadows, is an old manor house. It is home to a vivacious family of energetic parents and four young boys, filled with laughter, hurtling around house and garden.

I was brought here by my friends Bridget Elworthy and Henrietta Courtauld, the genius duo behind The Land Gardeners, who do everything from designing and growing blowsy flower gardens to creating climate-friendly compost, all in a whirlwind of endless energy. Bridget and Henrietta had been asked by the owners, Charlotte Dellal and her husband Maxim, to help them conceive visions for garden and meadows. They then realized that they needed help with the house and interiors too, and so began an adventure where our ideas bounced around creative minds like popcorn jumping out of the pan.

Charlotte’s eye is impeccable, and she knew exactly what she liked and didn’t, but I think it’s true to say that it was in the combination of ideas that we excelled at working together. She wanted a house filled with bright color and contrasts, but it’s a building that finds moments of great restraint, too. This is a generous, overflowing house for parties, with a huge dining room, buttercup-yellow drawing room, and a west-facing library that we glazed in a moss-green lacquer, but it has its quiet spaces as well, in which to sit, write, think, or linger.

The house restoration was an epic undertaking, carried out with the help of a diligent local architect, but under our watchful eye. We worked our way through rooms and furnishings, all the while making sure this was a house that would have spaces to grow into: Charlotte was adamant, quite rightly, that she didn’t want to live in a place delivered on a plate, where everything was finished in one instant. We left gaps on walls and spaces in rooms, where pictures and furniture would one day find a place. I took these photographs a few years after move-in, and things have already evolved since then. That is just how I like it, and just how you’ll find it if you work on decorating a house with me.

When it’s all put together in this way, the one thing that exudes from the happy beating heart of a house is the personality of those who live there. It’s this creative energy, between all these ideas, from room to room, and from house to garden, and back again, that makes my life as a decorator so interesting. Wearing my architectural hat, I restore the bones, revealing the structure and healing the build-ing. Decoration is about the messy, bright, cheerful thing called life, which covers all that up again, and makes it real, vital and unique.

Drawing Room

The drawing room is in an egg-yolk yellow: sunny by day, warm and inviting by night. This is a comfortable room, with deep squashy Howard & Sons sofas, designed for conversation and relaxation. The one in the foreground is in a Charles Burger chintz, "Fleurs de Pommiers." We introduced new French doors leading out to the west garden. Charlotte and Maxim have a ravishing collection of pictures.

The Library Fireplace

The fireplace was existing, in a stripped neoclassical pine—of course, originally it would have been painted, but we enjoyed its warmth and feeling of age. We added a new club fender with a bright turquoise horsehair seat. Armchairs are upholstered in Michael S. Smith’s "Grace" chintz, and a Beni Ourain rug sits on the seagrass floor. We designed the large library bookcase, which also houses a television.

The Hall

The stair hall is painted in Farrow & Ball’s "Pink Ground," a beautiful warm plaster-like color. The view beyond is to the glamorous library. Glazed and lacquered olive-green walls—painted for us by Mathew Bray and Matthew Collins—glow in an astonishing way in the afternoon sunlight. The wicker urn is from Atelier Vime, and the curtains are in an exotic silk stripe from Robert Kime.

Kitchen

The kitchen, with joinery by the studio, is painted in a cheery lime green from Dulux, combined with pale yellow "Willow" paper from Morris & Co. The range is from Lacanche. This is a practical and hardworking kitchen.

Bar

In the bar, we painted the ceiling in a glossy cherry red, and wallpapered the little room in a Fornasetti paper. Charlotte and Maxim’s hospitality is renowned, and the bar cart is appropriately well stocked.

Dining Room

In the dining room, we started with a glamorous, mirror-topped table in painted gesso designed and made for us by Jerry Rothman. Dinners in this room sparkle with candlelight. We sourced a large set of "Cockpen" dining chairs, upholstered in the palest pink linen, and painted the walls in rich "St Giles Blue" from Farrow & Ball. The curtain fabric is "Lola Montez" by Madeleine Castaing, who also designed the rug. A charismatic family portrait watches over glittering dinners today.

Primary Bedroom

The principal bedroom has an elegant Madeleine Castaing stripe on the walls, "Rayure Fleurie," seen in many of our projects and in our own flat in London. The eiderdown is from Flora Soames, and the eighteenth-century sofa is upholstered in a delicate shell-blue silk. The seagrass matting is made luxurious by a soft and fluffy rug.

Children's Bedroom

For this bedroom, we scanned a collection of eighteenth-century botanical engravings and wallpapered the room with the resulting prints. Tintin, Snowy, and a collection of tiny lead Highland soldiers are more than at home on the original Regency chimneypiece.

Boys' Bedroom

A bold and boisterous military-themed paper by Kravet in the boys’ bedroom, with a painted chest of drawers and a wonderful collection of bits and pieces, neatly arranged. The sofa glimpsed beyond, in the hallway, is in "Palm Drop" by Beata Heuman.