Habitat’s founder brought sensuality and sophistication to a country starved of fun and colour. He taught me and countless others how to live
When my mum came to visit me in my council flat in the mid-80s, she looked around disapprovingly. “It may be all right when it’s furnished,” she acknowledged. “It is furnished,” I told her.
This was the difference between her generation and mine. I did not have the mandatory three-piece suite, dinner table and chairs all crammed into one room. There were no china figurines on display. My knockoff Habitat sofa she found sad. It was all “unhomely” and bare. She wondered why I couldn’t even get a nice lampshade. I had, as everybody had then, the cheap white paper globes. I still like them.
