robin lee
When fashion people infuse their creativity into their homes, they create tactile interiors that visitors want to wear. “When you walk into a space like that, it’s just shocking,” Australian photographer, author and director Robin Lee told the BBC. Lee’s latest photobook, This Creative Life – Fashion Designers at Home, published this month, features 18 homes owned by leading fashion creators.
This book was born out of Leah’s curiosity and passion for design. “I’m interested in the origins of the creative spirit and where it comes from and why people need to create,” she says. She says it’s a piece that explores “the synergy between fashion design and interiors, and how they’re really one visual language.” These fashion designers don’t just wear their designs, they live them. “They don’t see any boundaries,” Leah added. For them, the clothes they wear and the house they live in are the same thing. We will introduce 8 interior designs from this book.
robin lee
Alice Temperley
Doric columns and a giant mirror ball are installed at the entrance of British designer Alice Temperley’s Regency mansion in Somerset, England. It’s an aesthetic described in the book as “bohemian mansion lady meets rock chick.” Inside, you’ll feel like you’re gliding on rails in glittering dresses with rich embroidery. There are gold accents and sparkles throughout. Textiles with bold patterns. And the dress “hangs like a painting,” Lee writes. The house is “just packed with fabric and color, and it’s a really wild ride.” In the library, a marmalade-colored domed ceiling rises above royal blue sofas and armchairs, creating a play of complementary colors. The swirls and animal prints on the seat covers are the result of a collaboration with textile and wallcovering designer Romo. Temperley London’s patterns and prints have been reimagined for homeware, embodying the natural harmony between fashion and interior design.
robin lee
Tamasin Dale
Australian milliner Tamasin Dale’s Melbourne and Castlemaine estate is home to a collection of houses and hats. “She’s into handmade things,” Leah explains. As a child, she would make things and sell them at local craft markets. Her home tells a story of this impulsive industry and creativity. It is dominated by natural straw-colored materials, reminiscent of the weave of her hats. Her kitchen, for example, is lined with hand-woven baskets and vintage wicker Marcel Breuer chairs. A milliner, her own sculptures, pottery and pottery are scattered throughout the house. “Again, it’s a fascination with three-dimensional forms. She’s not only interested in surface textures, but also in fusing those shapes into shapes that express her beauty. “We can see that,” says Lee. “So whether it’s a bowl or a hat, it comes from the same place.”
robin lee
luke edward hall
Creative polymath Luke Edward Hall, who founded fashion brand Chateau Orlando in 2022, shares a stone farmhouse in Gloucestershire with his husband, interior and furniture designer Duncan Campbell, and their two whippets. His designs and collaborations are based on his love for the eccentric British upper class, including striped waistcoats, patterned tank tops, corduroy blazers and velvet slippers, which are inspired by his idyllic Cotswolds. Inspires and inspires homes. A dresser full of vintage crockery in the dining room, an antique Staffordshire dog watching over the hearth, and pink floral wallpaper in the bedroom all speak to the nostalgic vision of England that permeates his designs. He says in his book: “The lines between my work and personal life are very blurred and all the aesthetics come together. That’s exactly what I like.”
robin lee
Laudomia Pucci
Legendary Italian designer Marquis Emilio Pucci (1914-1992) was a Renaissance man who lived in a Renaissance palace and did not limit his creative vision to fashion, launching perfumes and homewares. He also dabbled in car design. According to Lear, he was “one of the first full lifestyle brand designers.” When his daughter Loudomia took over, she took things a step further, bringing the label’s ornate geometric designs to Emilio’s beloved fuchsia pinks and turquoises in the family’s ancestral homeland. Introduced to Palazzo Pucci in Florence. “She really took the brand and brought it and guided it into a new millennium,” Lee says. “Not many people would be brave enough to touch a 14th-century palace and bring such vibrancy and color to it.”
robin lee
jade holland cooper
It’s no surprise that Jade Holland-Cooper, the daughter of a arable farmer and fashion designer, designs clothes inspired by the English countryside, including tweed field jackets, quilted gilets and equestrian wear. This love of the outdoors continues at her family home near Cheltenham, where she lives with her husband Julian Dunkerton, co-founder of clothing brand Superdry, and their two children. “Whether you’re designing a room, a garden, or clothing, it’s all the same,” Holland Cooper says in the book. Set on 160 hectares, the neoclassical Bath stone house is filled with natural wood, brown leather and greenery, and features a mudroom lined with Holland Cooper Sherpa-lined Wellington boots. The open ceiling and views bring in the outdoors. “She lives and breathes her brand,” Lee says.
robin lee
gary graham
“When I walked into their home, it felt like time stood still,” Lee says of the property that Gary Graham shares with his partner, artist, collector and interior designer Sean Scherer. Famous for his one-off designs that breathe new life into antique materials, Graham is known for his one-off designs, which include banks, post offices, department stores, and other 19th-century buildings that have gone through several renovations and are now filled with people. It is fitting that he should live there. We reuse vintage furniture and fabrics. A perfect example is a bedroom built into the wall. “It looks very cozy, I’d love to come in,” Leah says. “He developed that wallpaper from vintage ginger jars and used the same motif in some of his fashion designs. It’s all very connected.”
robin lee
Selina Blow
“I’m not an interior designer,” Serena Blow insists in This Creative Life, but the saturated colors of the velvets, silks and linens she tailors to the 200-year-old Gloucestershire farmhouse reappears in its color-block decoration. Blow credits this love of color to her mother. My mother missed the bright colors of her hometown in Sri Lanka, so she brought those colors into her family home. “I think Gothic with strong colors has always been my thing,” Blow says. Her dramatic blue bathroom, for example, features a black claw-foot bathtub next to a carefully arranged array of masquerade masks and a hat-wearing bust of her favorite, Philip Treacy. Whether you’re an interior designer or not, Blow’s bold aesthetic is here to stay. “It takes a lot of courage and confidence to paint an entire room a really bright blue,” says Lee. “And you can see that she’s wearing a jacket that’s the same color as the one she’s wearing.”
robin lee
Lucinda Chambers
Co-founder of fashion label Colville and former fashion director of Vogue, Lucinda Chambers’ maximalist London home is a far cry from the ’80s squat she once called home, but her early days The bohemian spirit of those days still remains. Mismatched fabrics and bright colors in the living room. Geometric patterns inspired by Colville’s travels are featured throughout, and like her clothes, comfort is key. Building an interior design is a lot like dressing up, says Chambers. “Choose your sofa and table before adding or removing other elements, such as adding earrings, beads, or bags,” she advises. For Chambers, “no boundaries” is what separates the two creative forms. “I decorate my body the same way I decorate the house I live in,” she says.
