Decorate it like the Beckhams
Rose Uniacke was, until a few years ago, a chic interior designer, familiar to those in the know, with a shop bearing her name that takes up the best part of a block in the heart of Chelsea in the U.K. — and a small, discreet client list.
Then, two years ago, Victoria and David Beckham commissioned her to makeover their Holland Park house — and she became That Interior Designer, chosen by the couple who could have had anyone.
Cut to a little over two years later — the house is finished and the Beckhams moved in over the summer.
“Of course I can’t tell you anything,” she says with a laugh when I press her to describe exactly what it’s like.
Can she at least lay to rest the rumours of matching his ‘n’ hers hair salons and four basement nail bars?
“There is nothing like that,” she says quietly, but firmly.
Of course not. A house that Rose Uniacke decorates (it’s not a big enough word for what she does, which is more, as she says, “reinventing space,” respecting the period features of a building and “simplifying to make it comfortable for modern life”), is currently the apogee of modern English elegance.
She is the queen of pared-down luxury. She’ll have gutted the house, thrown out all their furniture (sourcing 20th century “name” pieces is her specialty, as well as commissioning bespoke pieces).
Harper’s toys will be tucked away in something ’30s and Swedish, the TV will be secreted under a collector’s wall hanging. I’m guessing she’ll have found a way of losing that giant framed photograph of them kissing.
Now 53, with the looks of a model, Uniacke is a part of London fashionable society (her husband of nine years is the Harry Potter producer David Heyman), and a mother of five (she has an eightyear-old boy with Heyman, as well as three children with her first husband Robie Uniacke, now the partner of actress Rosamund Pike, and a stepson she brought up as her own). That’s part of the key. Uniacke knows all about balancing chic and lots of kids, grandeur and practicality and making it all look easy.
I can confirm that Uniacke in her home environment (she is as beautiful and as simply dressed as her interiors), is an excellent advertisement for the brand, which is why many clients get invited to the house.
“It is good to show people, I guess,” she says, “because it is nice to be able to demonstrate something with atmosphere.”
The word “minimal,” with its connotations of steel and beige and smoked glass, makes her flinch — “I hope my style is warm and welcoming ” — but she admits she often leaves walls and reclaimed oak floors bare, mantelpieces and table tops empty. You won’t find a fridge magnet in a Uniacke House or lots of framed photographs spread around; you will find plenty of empty, light saturated space. “I don’t over furnish,” she bursts out laughing. “I guess I am not overly decorative because I like a more serene atmosphere, because it is calming.”
She does seem temperamentally very well suited to a profession that can be stressful for all parties. But then, she’s been brought up with it. She trained as a gilder and restorer, before working for her mother, the antique dealer Hilary Batstone, and becoming a respected dealer in her own right. She knows her stuff on the furniture front (often the design of a room will begin with a piece of furniture or an art collection), and she is discreet to a fault, refusing to be drawn on likes, or dislikes, horror jobs or even favourites. What if a client wanted her to do something she couldn’t bear like a massive Jacuzzi?
“I would try to do that very, very beautifully,” she says, before succumbing to more laughter.
“Sometimes you have to say no. Obviously you are not a useful guide if you can’t.”
In spite of demand, she has deliberately kept the business small and manageable so that “everyone gets me, face to face.” Is there a waiting list? “Well, it depends what you mean by that. I do turn people away … it’s not that complicated. Sometimes I don’t think it’s for me, and the fit has to be right.”
It’s a long process, communication is key, and there are going to be times when the client is having a canary, as anyone knows who has got as far as choosing a colour from a paint chart.
“I am aware of how exposing it is and so hopefully we tread delicately. We take the strain. It is a layered process. And my clients trust me.”
She won’t talk about budget, but in theory there is no minimum spend: “We are doing a beach house in the South of France at the moment, so the project doesn’t have to be grand.”
Even so, it would be madness to hire Uniacke if you weren’t doing something on a grandish scale. Turning houses with the proportions of palazzos into enviable homes is what she does. The process takes time (years), and often involves her travelling with clients on shopping trips to fairs to source antiques and fabrics.
Everything, right down to the toilet brushes, is tailor made for its place. And still she makes it feel normal, fun and important. It’s a gift, really.