Ikea it ain’t - Jan Moir
£12k for owl lantern by designer who inspired Carrie? What a HOOT!
LULU LYTLE? Doesn’t she design yoga leggings or something? Beyond the salons and drawing rooms of fashionable London, few have heard of the interior designer who is said to be the inspiration for Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds’s refurbishment of their Downing Street living quarters.
I say Boris and Carrie. I mean Carrie, of course, for it is the Prime Minister’s fiancee who is in the chintzcovered driving seat when it comes to sprucing up the flat above No 11. The couple have lived there for 20 months, along with baby Wilf, Dilyn the dog and — oh my goodness, I think I’m going to faint — Samantha Cameron’s glassfronted Ikea cabinets.
Carrie has clearly decided this is simply Not Good Enough and has embarked on a plan to bring a little glamour and class to the dowdy Downing Street digs.
And who better to provide an example of walltowall luxe than Lulu Lytle and her Soane Britain company? While not exactly a household name, they have established themselves as a ‘conspiracy of excellence’ since launching in 1997. Lulu has decorated some of the grandest houses in London and has at least one royal client among her wealthy patrons. her own West London home is an alarming riot of patterns and pinks in a style that could be called ‘bohemian casbah’ or perhaps even ‘squat chic’, but many interiors for her clients exude classic simplicity and beautiful craftsmanship.
Soane have supplied furniture, fittings and fixtures to fivestar hotels, to the Soho house group, to Annabel’s nightclub and to Anya hindmarch shops. They supplied the casino chairs for the late David Tang’s China Club in Singapore, they kitted out a grand hotel dining room in Gstaad, Switzerland, they designed and made the scallop shell sconces that light up Bentley’s Oyster Bar in London.
They produce their own exquisite textiles, wallpapers and furniture. Everything is the best it can be and is produced by traditional British craftspeople including weavers, printers, saddlers, blacksmiths, chairmakers and upholsterers. Miss Lytle has a particular fondness for rattan, and when Soane revived and saved the last rattanweaving workshop in the UK, Prince Charles came to visit and offer his support.
None of this comes cheap. At Soane, corners are not cut, they are bevelled, upholstered, polished and stitched by expert hand. Soane is so posh and high end that there are no prices on its website, although there are terrifying reports of £20,000 sofas and wallpaper that costs £700 a metre.
WhATEvEr Carrie has chosen for the refurbishment, Boris is said to be appalled at the bills, reportedly complaining that the cost is ‘out of control’ and perhaps was even ‘over a hundred grand’. Can that possibly be true?
It is certainly no secret that many men freak if you try to buy a cushion that costs more than sixpence, and question the wisdom of buying another scented candle when you’ve already ‘got one in the hall’.
Yet the Prime Minister is said to have whimpered that his fiancee appeared to have ordered ‘gold wall coverings’, which does indeed sound worrying. however, what I want to know is: could it be Lulu’s Pineapple Frond or her Scrolling Fern?
One wonders why on earth the couple are bothering, considering that they are essentially living in a rented flat and at some point in the nottoo distant future they will have to move out. ‘It is simply outrageous,’ says interior designer Nicky haslam. ‘It seems very odd to spend all that money on changing it when the next person who moves in is going to change it all back again.’
Boris is said to be struggling to fund the makeover and wants to raise cashw by trying to set up a charity that would cover the refurbishment. Considering his expensive divorce and Carrie’s lack of visible means, one wonders if they are living the kind of fivestar life they simply could not afford if left to their own devices.
At the end of the day we are talking about the flat above the shop. We expect our prime ministers and their families to live in reasonable comfort, but does it have to be quite so fabulous or grand?
The Camerons got by without handpainted wallpaper or leather sofas, Theresa May just made do with what was there and, in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher paid for the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat herself.
I love a nicely padded chair as much as the next girl, but should Carrie start to cut her golden wallpaper according to her budget?