PAPER GIANTS
Kate Moss and de Gournay founder Claud Cecil Gurney team up to form a creative hub for luxury wallpaper.
Kate Moss and de Gournay founder Claud Cecil Gurney team up to form a creative hub for luxury wallpaper
N PLAIN PAPER THE PAIRING READS AS IMPROBABLE — the indomitably cool Kate Moss collaborating with luxury design house de Gournay, makers of customised wallcoverings for the upper crust. But on blue-green silk, the twilight cast of which immerses Ms Moss’s London living room in a field of anemones flushed with rainbow refractions, the improbable presents as sublime. Should anyone be surprised? The ‘profit and Moss’ potential of the model’s hip nonchalance applied to handmade couture has proven since the early 1990s, when John Galliano first cast a waifish kid from London’s Croydon on his catwalk. Moss’ impact on fashion was instant and far-reaching, but two decades and 37 covers of British Vogue later, what makes a heritage brand believe that the same alchemy can activate interiors? Claud Cecil Gurney, founder and director of the three-decadeplus de Gournay, answers this question with his account of being called to the Moss home in 2000 to discuss the potential of its decoration; an appointment that incurred a three-hour wait in the supermodel’s bathroom. “She never appeared, which increased our fascination and desire to meet and work with her,” says the unflappable Gurney, amused that some 17 years later the meeting eventuated. “We were summoned back to a different bathroom, where Kate actually appeared, and we found what a charismatic and charming person she really is.” Charm is an errant quality on which to base a business collaboration, but it marks the counterintuitive entrepreneurship of a finance man who famously fell into the decorative arts industry in 1986 after searching for suitable skills to restore the Chinoiserie wallpaper in his home. It was a hunt that led Gurney to China and a chat with the Communist authorities who, then emerging from the conformity of the Cultural Revolution, agreed to his re-activation of artisan studios in regional areas. Moss was a minnow in comparison to the might of Communist China, but Gurney charmed the similarly self-pleasing force with his passion for handpainted wall covers and the prize of personalising her home with his company’s art. De Gournay’s design director, Jemma Cave, summarily met with Moss at her house in Highgate, north London, to drill down to the detail of the model’s desired film noir drama until Cave was ready to dip her brush in paint and materialise the de Gournay magic. Many cups of Lapsang Souchong tea and Seedlip cocktails later, Moss stands posing in sybaritic semi-dress for the camera of her boyfriend, Nikolai von Bismarck, in a bathroom glowing in the silver sheen of Anemones in Light and appraises the collaborative outcome. “It is so carefully considered from a single well-placed bird or flower; with the background colour and tones,” she chimes. “It adds warmth, texture, dimension and drama to a room. The wallpaper can transport you to another place. It lifts the soul.”