DID YOU KNOW?

1 As well as the shop, Nancy Lancaster took over the rooms on the first floor of the Brook Street building. She and Fowler decorated them with flair – the most famous space was the Yellow Room (above), a sunny drawing room painted in a rich buttercup hue. 2 One of the brand’s earliest and still popular prints, ‘Bowood’ ( left) is inspired by a document possibly discovered at the famous Grade I-listed Wiltshire house of the same name. 3 Colefax and Fowler and its decorating arm, Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, are now part of a larger luxury fabric group that includes Jane Churchill, Manuel Canovas, Larsen and Kingcome Sofas. 4 The ‘Snow Tree’ design (far left) was inspired by an 18th-century wallpaper from Drottningholm Court Theatre in Sweden, a piece of which was given to Nancy Lancaster by the country’s king. 5 Lancaster and Fowler’s business relationship was tumultuous. Lancaster’s formidable aunt, Lady Nancy Astor, the first British female MP, once referred to them as ‘the unhappiest unmarried couple in England’.