The Brit with a growing reputation for colourful yet serene interiors

Who is she? Fran Hickman only set up her Notting Hill practice in 2014, but she’s already making waves. Given where she cut her teeth – as an in-house designer at the Soho House Group in New York and then at Waldo Works, Tom Bartlett’s renowned London studio – this is hardly surprising. There’s a clean, calm quality to her work that shines through in all her projects, from homes to retail. What’s her style? A confident use of materials and colour, and a refusal to cram interiors with objects or decoration – for her, empty space is not a vacuum waiting to be filled. Hickman says that growing up in a London townhouse with six siblings taught her to ‘appreciate the need for personal space’, and to regard the ‘weight of stuff’ as a distraction. ‘I would describe my decorating style as considered, tailored and concise,’ she reflects. An early project was the interiors of the loft apartments at the Vinyl Factory (right and below), a former car park in London’s Soho. Under Hickman’s direction, the walls were painted white and the rooms furnished with flea-market finds and Modernist pieces. What are her recent projects? The Chess Club, opened last year in a six-storey Mayfair townhouse, shows Hickman’s impressive design vocabulary, with references to the surreal mid-century interiors of Renzo Mongiardino and Carlo Mollino combined with motifs borrowed from antique Japanese prints. Arguably, though, Hickman’s finest work to date is on two fashion boutiques – one for Emilia Wickstead in Knightsbridge and the other for online fashion retailer Moda Operandi in Belgravia (top right). The focus, as so often with Hickman, is on fine materials (pale terrazzo and gleaming brass) and shades of blush and lipstick pink. She says ‘My philosophy follows that of Charles and Ray Eames, who believed that the role of the designer is that of a thoughtful host, whose energy is devoted to anticipating the needs of their guests.’ franhickman.com