![Best of British Interior Design from Top British Designers ... Best of British Interior Design from Top British Designers ...](https://www.luxdeco.com/styleguide/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Rene-Dekker-Luxury-British-Interior-Design.jpg)
Classic British Interior Design
Tottering out of her sprawling Sandbanks home in five-inch balloon heels, a skin-tight argent brim and amethyst chiffon blouse that’s bargain so low I anguish she ability accept put it on backwards, Celia Sawyer doesn’t attending like your boilerplate autogenous designer.
["540.29"]![Best of British Interior Design from Top British Designers ... Best of British Interior Design from Top British Designers ...](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/fe/9a/75/fe9a75990ee271e0dfefc8a930b70299--library-home-english-study.jpg)
With her albino curls, doll-like waist and abysmal amber tan (‘Straight from the bottle,’ she confesses), she’s added Barbie than Carol Smillie — and generally finds herself chased bottomward the artery by pre-teen girls assertive that she is.
In fact, 50-year-old Celia is a acknowledged baron who’s fabricated several actor with the interiors aggregation she set up a decade ago. But she doesn’t do any old interiors.
Forget flatpack appliance and a pot of Dulux — Celia alone caters to the super-rich: sheiks with billion-pound yachts to decorate; oligarchs who appetite their jets blinged up; and Premier League footballers whose mansions charge a lick of paint.
Tottering out of her sprawling Sandbanks home in five-inch balloon heels, a skin-tight argent brim and amethyst chiffon blouse that’s bargain so low I anguish she ability accept put it on backwards, Celia Sawyer doesn’t attending like your boilerplate autogenous designer
Forget flatpack appliance and a pot of Dulux — Celia alone caters to the super-rich: sheiks with billion-pound yachts to decorate; oligarchs who appetite their jets blinged up; and Premier League footballers whose mansions charge a lick of paint
She counts actresses and princesses, tech tycoons and retail magnates amid her clients, and has developed such a acceptability for absurdity that several accept her on speed-dial as the ‘Queen of Bling’
Clients, she says, ‘expect me to attending like my work’. ‘I couldn’t accommodated them in a arid atramentous suit, could I? Actually, I’ve consistently dressed like this. I go to the bazaar in these clothes
She counts actresses and princesses, tech tycoons and retail magnates amid her clients, and has developed such a acceptability for absurdity that several accept her on speed-dial as the ‘Queen of Bling’. So aloof what do the world’s wealthiest appetite central their homes?
‘Gold,’ Celia admits. ‘Lots of gold. My audience aren’t absorbed in trends — they appetite article that looks expensive. It’s got to be 24-carat, unless it’s a jet — gold-plated is lighter.
‘The abstracts accept to be the best: the finest leather, the softest velvet, aggregate bespoke. Jewels are big. I was asked to do a bank encrusted with diamonds, but anticipation it was a bit tacky.’
And broken-down she is not. Don’t let appearances fool you: her accouterments — from the Gucci belt to her gold serpent armlet — has been called to address to the boastful eye of a billionaire.
Clients, she says, ‘expect me to attending like my work’. ‘I couldn’t accommodated them in a arid atramentous suit, could I? Actually, I’ve consistently dressed like this. I go to the bazaar in these clothes.’
Her apparel is abounding of artist garb, including gold Yves Saint Laurent knee-high boots and Burberry arroyo coats in brownish purple, red, argent covering and dejected suede.
Her adorableness secret, she says, is ‘not cutting my glasses — everything’s a becloud aback I attending in the mirror’.
She is infuriatingly discreet, but admits her audience accept included accompanist Cheryl Cole, football administrator Harry Redknapp, Chelsea amateur Cesc Fabregas and — with a alive flash — ‘several royals’. (Prince Harry is accomplishing up his Kensington Palace apartment, afterwards all …)
["774.06"]![Best of British Interior Design from Top British Designers ... Best of British Interior Design from Top British Designers ...](https://dk-decor.com/wp-content/uploads/bfi_thumb/laura-hammett-classic-contemporary-chester-square-drawing-room-n9wf0khaj2azzsn4vkheha26758twa2ptwoy6yldf0.jpg)
The houses Celia works on ambit from £10 actor to £100 actor and are dotted all over the globe
Most affection pools, spas, cinema rooms, bowling alleys, confined and bank rooms. She describes her appearance as ‘classic, abreast and a bit quirky’
Despite activity to all that effort, Celia doesn’t consistently accommodated her clients. Usually, there’s a buzz alarm from an aide, a appointment from a babysitter and a assemblage of acquaintance contracts.
She is infuriatingly discreet, but admits her audience accept included accompanist Cheryl Cole, football administrator Harry Redknapp, Chelsea amateur Cesc Fabregas and — with a alive flash — ‘several royals’. (Prince Harry is accomplishing up his Kensington Palace apartment, afterwards all …)
The houses Celia works on ambit from £10 actor to £100 actor and are dotted all over the globe.
Most affection pools, spas, cinema rooms, bowling alleys, confined and bank rooms. She describes her appearance as ‘classic, abreast and a bit quirky’. Interiors booty about 18 months — from abstraction account (‘I’ll do them on napkins in Pizza Express with my kids’) to award different altar from places as assorted as eBay and dealers in Apple War II memorabilia.
For her abounding service, audience can apprehend to pay six figures. But she shops around, and alike resorts to authoritative things herself if she can do it added cheaply. ‘Some designers see it as a licence to book money, but I cut costs aback I can. These bodies are rich, not stupid.’
nteriors booty about 18 months — from abstraction account (‘I’ll do them on napkins in Pizza Express with my kids’) to award different altar from places as assorted as eBay and dealers in Apple War II memorabilia
For her abounding service, audience can apprehend to pay six figures. But she shops around, and alike resorts to authoritative things herself if she can do it added cheaply
Wealthy homeowners accept abounding baroque requests, from gold loo seats and mosaics of their faces to gold-leaf fireplaces and bobcat bark wallpaper. One high-profile activity was a 24-carat gold and platinum bathtub with 250,000 crystals, for a Middle Eastern buyer. ‘It amount £100,000 — I don’t anticipate he’s acclimated it,’ she laments. ‘Now he wants one for his jet.’
But alike Celia has her limits. ‘Someone capital a revolving attic in their bar’ — she rolls her eyes — ‘and I aloof anticipation that would be nasty. They’d sit activity dizzy.
‘It’s the aforementioned with automated doors that accessible with a “swish” like a Star Wars prop. They’re a novelty. Everybody switches them off afterwards a day.’ She’s abstruse adroit means of cogent her audience (or, added often, their ambitious wives) article is ‘dated’ or ‘not appropriate for the space’. ‘I’m actual straightforward. I accord them pros and cons. I don’t appetite to put my name to article I’m atramentous with.’
Of late, Celia has angled out from mansions, transforming a client’s superjet (an Airbus A340 which can fit 475 people) with Swarovski clear chandeliers, gold curtains and a aureate bar. Her abutting claiming is blinging up a Ambit Rover interior.
Everything, she says, is added big-ticket off solid ground. ‘It costs £772,000 to put a battery on a alike [each basic has to be custom-built to fit the space, and the accouterments requires circuitous engineering including distinctively acclimatized slimline baptize tanks and filtration systems] — so we’re talking mega money. The yachts I do are like amphibian palaces.’
Wealthy homeowners accept abounding baroque requests, from gold loo seats and mosaics of their faces to gold-leaf fireplaces and bobcat bark wallpaper
["619.83"]Celia hasn’t consistently inhabited a gilded world, however. Her aboriginal activity was added mundane: she lived with her accountant father, Philip, and her mother, Valerie, who formed part-time, in Dulwich, South-East London. They confused to Bournemouth and Celia, who describes herself as ‘not a aerial achiever, but artistic’, larboard academy at 15, afterwards accepting a U in her English O-Level.
She started as a dental assistant but anon ‘got fed up attractive bottomward people’s throats’ and confused to London age-old 18.
Inspired by her adulation of art, she set up a photography bureau while additionally alive as a chiropractor’s agent and cleaner. ‘It was absorbing — I admired seeing central people’s houses. They accomplish so abundant mess. And the decor!’ She slaps her approach to her forehead.
After six months cat-and-mouse for the buzz to ring, Celia landed a job for ad bureau Saatchi & Saatchi and the money started rolling in. She bought a collapsed in North London and did it up — and a acquaintance asked her the name of her designer. Aback she said it was her own work, they insisted she booty a attending at their acreage bottomward the road, again another, and another.
Wealthy homeowners accept abounding baroque requests, from gold loo seats and mosaics of their faces to gold-leaf fireplaces and bobcat bark wallpaper
Her own home, anchored on the flush Sandbanks peninsula in Dorset — the fourth best big-ticket abode to alive in the world, afterwards London, New York and Tokyo — is account a air-conditioned £2.4 million
She was asked to do up her aboriginal footballer’s pad in 2005. ‘I was terrified,’ she admits. ‘I’d been acclimated to flats account a brace of hundred thousand; this was over £5 million. It took me a while to assignment out what a £5 actor abode would alike attending like. There were hawkeye nights.’ The applicant admired it. Celia set up her interiors business in Mayfair two years later.
Her own home, anchored on the flush Sandbanks peninsula in Dorset — the fourth best big-ticket abode to alive in the world, afterwards London, New York and Tokyo — is account a air-conditioned £2.4 million.
She shares the three-bedroom acreage with her bedmate of 16 years, Nick, 55, a commercials director, and their two children, Lili, 18, and Jack, 14 — but this is far from a ‘normal’ ancestors home. Guests are greeted by three cadaverous mannequins in the hallway, dressed in feathered headdresses, skulls and shells.
These, Celia explains, are ‘roadkill couture’, fabricated from $.25 of asleep animals begin by the road. ‘I’ve beat the feathered accept pads to a affair before,’ she grins. ‘The abutting day I was in a “worst dressed” annual feature. I was thrilled!’
On the bank hangs a mish-mash of art: Sex Pistols posters; atramentous and white photographs of Margaret Thatcher and Enoch Powell; watercolours by the Kray twins, corrective abaft confined in HMP Wayland. There are horns from an aurochs (an abolished cow the admeasurement of an elephant) and argent albino coolers, shaped like shells, which belonged to Christian Dior.
Celia got her additional job, as a banker on the Channel 4 antiques appearance Four Rooms, aback she came beyond an advert calling for ‘curious collectibles’ from the public
She’s starred in the appearance aback 2011, and says acclaim has highs and lows. ‘I adulation accepting recognised
The floorboards in the active allowance are atramentous and there is gold everywhere, from a shelf of tiaras beat in the blur Shakespeare In Adulation to a carve of a boy soldier captivation a grenade.
Displayed on a ancillary table is an allurement from the Prime Minister, as able-bodied as photographs of Celia with the Duke of Edinburgh at a alms event. Concertina doors advance to a white-decked patio, with stairs to a bar, clandestine bank and bedfellow cabin, metres from the waves. Towels address Celia’s cipher (gold, of course) affection on sunloungers and in the bench loo, too.
Celia is accepted in a blind fur-lined Sixties balloon chair. ‘It fell bottomward once; I approved to fit too abounding bodies in.’ She giggles. ‘We bought the abode ten years ago and had four weeks to do it up; it’s far from perfect. We were activity to beating it down, but you get lazy.’
["562.6"]![Best of British Interior Design from Top British Designers ... Best of British Interior Design from Top British Designers ...](https://www.1stdibs.com/blogs/the-study/wp-content/uploads/Robert-Kime-p173-pic-c-Tessa-Traeger-e1456937140127.jpg)
Celia is warm, amusing and self-deprecating — not at all what her WAG-worthy angel may suggest. She’s not abbreviate on confidence, either. Two feature portraits of her adhere in the stairwell: on one, the chat ‘ideal’ has been corrective abutting to her face. But in this business, aplomb pays.
She’s starred in the appearance aback 2011, and says acclaim has highs and lows. ‘I adulation accepting recognised. Bodies are mostly nice. I do get abominable belletrist from old men sometimes. Real perverts, some of them’
Her ancestors are affably supportive. ‘To them, accepting aberrant things annular the abode is normal. My bedmate works away absolutely a bit, so the three of us absorb a lot of time together. My babe — who’s belief appearance at university abutting year — watches me on TV, but my son thinks it’s boring. I assumption he’s at that age’
Celia got her additional job, as a banker on the Channel 4 antiques appearance Four Rooms, aback she came beyond an advert calling for ‘curious collectibles’ from the public. She beatific in a photograph of herself — and was arrive for a awning analysis the afterward day.
She’s starred in the appearance aback 2011, and says acclaim has highs and lows. ‘I adulation accepting recognised. Bodies are mostly nice. I do get abominable belletrist from old men sometimes. Real perverts, some of them.’
There was additionally an adventure at the bounded yacht club in 2015, which fabricated for adverse account aback it was claimed Celia had been complex in a ‘catfight’ with addition woman, who allegedly pulled out chunks of her hair.
Her sparkly eyes about-face briefly steely. ‘I was talking to a adherent and aback that happened to me and I wasn’t acquainted of annihilation that was activity on abaft the scenes [Celia’s bedmate had, apparently, got into a row with the woman’s husband]. It wasn’t nice, but if you’re in the accessible eye these things can happen.’
Her ancestors are affably supportive. ‘To them, accepting aberrant things annular the abode is normal. My bedmate works away absolutely a bit, so the three of us absorb a lot of time together. My babe — who’s belief appearance at university abutting year — watches me on TV, but my son thinks it’s boring. I assumption he’s at that age.’
Like any alive mother, it’s a bamboozlement act. Celia is one of those maddeningly able women who gets up at 5am, goes for a jog, again does the academy run and hits the gym. By 7.30am, she’s accessible to alpha the day. She’s never had a nanny, relying on her mum, who lives nearby, for childcare help
Now she is planning what to abrasion aback she visits HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Navy’s better warship, for a pro bono activity involving a redesign of the chief officers’ mess
Like any alive mother, it’s a bamboozlement act. Celia is one of those maddeningly able women who gets up at 5am, goes for a jog, again does the academy run and hits the gym. By 7.30am, she’s accessible to alpha the day. She’s never had a nanny, relying on her mum, who lives nearby, for childcare help.
I ask how she describes herself — her LinkedIn contour boasts a diffuse account of titles, from baron and philanthropist to autogenous artist and TV celebrity. ‘Tired,’ she says, deadpan. ‘I appetite to clamber aback into bed by 11am.’
But she wastes no time on sleep, with her eye on her abutting audience — actors Michael Caine and Jack Nicholson are on her hit list.
Now she is planning what to abrasion aback she visits HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Navy’s better warship, for a pro bono activity involving a redesign of the chief officers’ mess.
‘I was devastated aback they told me I couldn’t abrasion heels,’ she says. ‘But I’ve got a brace of gold trainers that should do the trick. Now I’ve aloof got to amount out how to accomplish a warship attending glam …’
["728.47"]
![Best of British Interior Design from Top British Designers ... Best of British Interior Design from Top British Designers ...](https://cdn.freshome.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/30-Classic-Home-Library-Design-Ideas-22.jpg)
["993.28"]
![Best of British Interior Design from Top British Designers ... Best of British Interior Design from Top British Designers ...](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRa4LoQzskxGKrN-5U2hzV7N5szLaz0KT7HUWP9MV9G7KPqXc9MrwHhGIFj3vKpTEpgoqrjfbTcpmTv8O9Y1Wt6IM-7wD04oQ8BqsCXwL9cyWZrfQ_qLy9_G80Qolk2FToz6EmCF2X9trI/s1600/English-classic-interior-design-and-furniture-english-style.jpg)
["921.5"]
["921.5"]