ANOUSKA Hempel is one of the world’s foremost designers of elegant living and the hotelier behind Kensington’s and Amsterdam’s Blakes Hotels, as well as the Hempel Hotel in London. As soon as Glass arrives at her home in Knightsbridge, we were made to feel comfortable in the tranquillity of the living space, where it becomes clear that creating an alluring space is her raison d’être as a designer.
Lady Weinberg, Hempel’s title on her 1980 marriage to Sir Mark Weinberg, now heads up her London-based studio of architects and landscape designers while venturing outside and beyond the mainstream to design naval architecture, product and furniture design and private residential properties in locations that span all five continents. Hempel established the pioneering five-star Blakes Hotel in London in 1978, one of the world’s first luxury boutique hotels, and in 2002, the magazine Architectural Digest ranked her as one of the world’s leading 100 interior designers and architects.
As we talk, Hempel stresses that being introduced to a Hempel interior can serve as an experience – one of atmospheric and memorable proportions – echoing the view of feminist author and painter Mary Hawies that “one of the first canons of good taste is that our houses, like the fish’s shell and the bird’s nest, ought to represent our individual taste and habits”.
When did you first realise that interior design was your calling?
Around the day I arrived in a rotten-fitting nappy and I knew the world was going to be a better place if I were to get a hold of some of it. It started very, very early… with counting peas on a plate and lining up other family members’ eggcups and being a pain in the neck about how I saw things. I see everything as a moving still life, everything you do should be beautiful and should be able to stay there for posterity and not move. In my young days, apparently that’s what I did all day and all night; I criticised everyone for everything, and I got sent away fairly early so the rest of the girls could grow up in a proper family. I went off to boarding school and had a ball.
Anouska Hempel’s Ennismore Gardens home
It seems that you are someone who has always interested and appealed to people due to the fashionable atmosphere that you create around you. What’s the secret?
I don’t know about fashionable, I question that word a bit – perhaps stylish. I don’t know for certain, it just happens, and becomes something.
You designed the renowned Blakes Hotel from the first floor up from 1974 until it was opened in 1978. It then went on to become the first boutique hotel of its kind. What made you sure this was somewhere that guests would want to inhabit?
During that period a lot of people were saying, ‘There’s nowhere to stay’. You could either stay in the bed and breakfast down the alleyway or at The Dorchester. There had to be somewhere in between. I managed to find the money to kick-start the process and from then on we were very lucky. I lived there; working between Addison Road and Blakes non-stop, doing things from home, trying it out with total freedom to get the atmosphere right. Nobody was telling me what to do – I just did it. As I found something, bought something and added something to it, I then I took something else away, and it all worked. Soon enough it became everybody’s kind of place to hang out in those days. There was no checking on anybody, there were no real rules.
Blakes Hotel in Kensington
Was it ever daunting at any point designing the hotel from the top to bottom?
No, nothing daunts me really.
When did you first develop your understanding of how one is influenced by their environments?
I think if you make yourself feel like you look ok in the surroundings, there must be someone else like you out there in the world that’s going to feel the same, and that was my way of looking at it. That mirror of myself gave me confidence that the rest of the world would be doing the same, so it didn’t bother me; I just did it and people loved it.
Hempel Hotel in Bayswater
So that’s what makes you want to inhabit a space. Somewhere that makes you feel on top form?
Yes, you have to feel you’re looking your best. You and I and everyone else, we all want to be, wherever we are, looking as good as we can. Why show up with an odd bit of hair here and a new wart that’s just arrived there, which you haven’t noticed – do you know what I’m saying? Soften it, play with light and make yourself at ease, comfortable in your space.
How do you know you are making the right decision?
I mostly know I’m not making the wrong ones, and if I have made a wrong one, I can get out of it as fast as I got into it, as long as it’s not architecture and I haven’t put the pillar in the wrong place.
Grosvenor House apartments in Mayfair
Your interior design vision seems to inhabit a world of its own. But what cultures are you drawn to stylistically and why?
Japan and Italy. Two totally contradictory influences, but I love the harum-scarum of Italy and the strictness of Japan. Put that together and I think it’s what we do. The way each of these cultures use their space in such a unique way is a constant inspiration to me.
Playing with symmetry also seems to be a recurring principle in your work. What does this do for an interior?
It is, but don’t be mistaken, this is only by going totally asymmetrical. This is just as effective as working symmetrically. You have to be careful, however, because proportions have to be perfect if you use asymmetry as your guide. If done correctly it changes the look of a space completely and usually takes your eye away from any problems.
Warapuru Bahia private villa in Brazil
Alongside this, it seems that the repetition of certain objects in a single space is also something that you promote. Why is this something that appeals to you?
I like to go for all or nothing.
Is perfection something that is achievable to you?
Perfection is always reachable but as the Voltaire saying goes, ‘Perfection is the enemy of good’ and I often feel I could also do better, so I always make sure I have another idea up my sleeve.
Le Grande Theatre in Beirut
How do you work with a client to create a copacetic space?
Usually, my clients want everything that I do and respect the look I create. Naturally, I endeavour to get my way most of the time and half of the time they don’t always know what they want to achieve, so it can only work well.
The profession of interior design is something that is often seen to be constantly evolving. What would you say to this?
It is always evolving and always going out on a limb. Sometimes it loses all traces of reality and then soon enough it inevitably returns. But at the moment things are being made for fun and impact by exiting, young, up-and-coming designers who are really having a whale of a time. For now, commercially, I think this is great. Everyone is doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and even though I find this disparate because everything I create has to be homogeneous and have a touch of mystique, it does depend on what you do with certain things.
Building on this, it doesn’t seem you have ever been a slave to the zeitgeist. Is this so?
Completely. I think I’ve always seen myself as a little bit ahead of the time.
What else would you like to do with your life at this point?
I would like to go and build a citadel in the sand somewhere with very high, rocky peaks and essentially create a whole township; with a centre right here, a church over there, a market over here and on from there. I’d love to have a really good go at creating something seriously modern in a desert surrounding, beautifully replicating a classic citadel. I say citadel because of where I’d like to live, yet really I’d like to design a whole other world.
You must have had the pleasure of seeing a lot throughout your life. What is the one thing that has had a lasting impression on you?
What I’m going to see next, which is our new house-project in Istanbul. But come to think of it, probably one of the greatest sights which left a real impression was the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo; the building, what was inside it, the people and the magic of running it – it’s been there since the twenties. Everything in that place got me going onto every single thing I could think of. It’s dusty, badly lit but absolutely wonderful. You know, it’s going to disappear in a minute so it’s important for it to be mentioned more often. I always make certain to always use my eyes and find myself looking for new things all the time.
by Livia Feltham
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