ICING ON THE CAKE
Six miles from the town of Chora and its old port on the Greek island of Mykonos along dusty narrow roads and past donkeys, dilapidated dry-stone walls and picturesque farmsteads dotting the rocky terrain stands a whitewashed home. It’s the holiday house of Australian-born, Londonbased designer and skincare entrepreneur Rebecca Korner, her husband and their twin sons. A sun-filled retreat surrounded by gardens, the property overlooks the bay of Elia and across the Aegean Sea to the far islands of Paros and Naxos in the south. With its labyrinthine twists and turns, the vernacular architecture of Chora echoes the twists in Korner’s own story. Growing up in Sydney with a passion for travel and her Hungarian heritage — her father George Korner emigrated from Hungary to Australia and, along with her grandmother and aunt, established the Madame Korner beauty empire — it wasn’t long before Europe beckoned the young creative. Starting out in Paris working in magazines, Korner later moved to London and founded Körner Skincare. After meeting her husband and settling down, she fell into interior design. “I designed our townhouse in London, then one of my husband’s clients came for drinks and asked who did the interior design,” she says. “His house became my first project.” Trading as Körner Interiors, the self-taught designer has since worked in London on residential projects, boutiques and most recently the new Mayfair restaurant Muse from acclaimed British chef Tom Aikens.
Korner’s Grecian holiday home is one of her latest creations. “When I was island-hopping 20 years ago, Mykonos seemed remote — more of a Greek secret — but it had a great night-life,” she says. Newly married, Korner first returned a decade ago with her husband and their twins, then aged one, on the lookout for a holiday retreat. “We discovered this house and loved renting it each year,” she says, “but then the Italian owners, who built the house in 1995, announced they were selling it.”
Korner’s husband was keen to purchase the home but the designer was hesitant. “Unlike him, I knew what was going to be involved,” she says. Armed with a dangerously limited Greek vocabulary, Korner decided to go ahead with the purchase and a renovation. “I planned to do the architecture in one year and the interior the year after,” she says. True to her word, the house was complete two years later thanks in part to monthly site visits.
A courtyard herb garden scented with basil, lavender, thyme, oregano, parsley and lemon balm now welcomes visitors to the newly refurbished home. From the outside, the property resembles a display of iced wedding cakes yet inside the main building are three floors housing five bedrooms, each with its own bathroom. Two adjacent outbuildings house a guest bedroom each.
Korner consciously avoided the Cyclades signature look of white walls with blue-painted windows and doors. “I wanted a sense of Greek rustic mixed with an international Australian flavour,” she says. “The great thing about Australians is their outward and inspired thinking. I grew up in a Sydney home that looked like a modern art gallery with expansive whitewashed walls that had colourful contemporary paintings lent against them… they were never hung. The ‘new world’ is more open to modernity and that mindset continues to influence me. We kept the authentic Mykonian architecture but inside used collectible pieces from across the globe.”
The site visits throughout the year played more than a passing influence on the home’s inviting feel. “What was really beautiful about the process was to see the island over the colder winter months,” Korner says. “Unlike the cobalt-sky-on-barren-rock quality of August, out of season the landscape is grass-green. I saw carpets of tiny yellow flowers, red poppies, spring dawns and sunsets with lilac-pink ››