When the feted designer traded fashion for interiors, he found a more natural fit. Now, with a new book out – part memoir, part style guide – Matthew Williamson shows Eva Wiseman round his stunning London home
A simple list,” says Matthew Williamson. “Twenty questions. Like,” counting on his fingers, “What’s your design icon? What’s your favourite restaurant? Do you have a treasured possession? Who’s your favourite artist? That sort of thing.” This is how fashion designer turned interior designer Williamson begins every project, sitting down with his client, creating a moodboard, before going away and thinking quite deeply about, say, the colour pink. Do you have a favourite decade? What’s your favourite scent? What’s your earliest childhood memory? But the list, he points out, isn’t just for wealthy clients – it’s useful for everybody. “If you’re renovating your kitchen and you’re struggling, which people obviously are because there’s so much choice out there online, such a barrage of visuals, it’s quite nice to use these questions to really ask yourself: what do I like?”
The quick answer, looking around his high-ceilinged London flat, is “This.” We like this, Matthew, this joyful, playful romp of a home, with its mint-green bedroom, blue doors, green doorways, sense upon walking in that you’re stepping into a grand, velvet, patch of sunlight. The living room, in which we sit today, gazing out of ceiling-height windows to the garden below, has blush pink walls (“I don’t really see it as pink, to be honest – it’s really a warmer solution to beige”) against a tobacco-coloured window alcove (“Hackney Gold it’s called. By a brand called Pickleson paint who do lovely colours, including one called Pissy Yellow”) and its elegant collection of vintage furniture lit by a glass chandelier that used to hang in his New York store.
