SOPHIE CONRAN’S CHRISTMAS INSPIRATIONS
The interior designer, cook and author on how she hopes to be celebrating this festive season
MY TRADITIONS
Christmas is a coming together of all my favourite things – decorating the house, cooking and, of course, celebrating together. We have a big family affair and, as there are so many of us, tend to have multiple celebrations at different family member’s houses. This year, although different, will still be magical, and we’ll still have our traditional Boxing Day buffet. There are many festive moments I look forward to. Trimming the tree is always fun; we’ll have champagne, canapés and much giggling as we decorate. I’ve got lots of favourite decorations and delight in trimming the tree – although I’m a bit bossy, so my helpers sometimes abandon me! And I always look forward to wrapping up the presents that I place in our Christmas stockings, using tissue paper in lots of different colours.
I’m a huge collector of ceramics and tableware, and we get out the very best at Christmas. There are formal place settings, with place cards, napkins and lots of crackers. I like to have a big garland running down the centre of our dining table, filled with fairy lights and candles. Every year, we light a Chocolate Bomb – it explodes with a colossal bang and showers the table with sweets.
MY HOME
This year I’m looking forward to celebrating Christmas at my house in the country. I love decorating here – for the front door I’ll have a wreath from my friend Nikki Tibbles at Wild At Heart. I always have real trees and this year they’ll be from Pines & Needles, the online delivery service – one main tree for the sitting room and five smaller ones for the balcony on the front of the house.
The tree will be decorated in silver and red, and I’ll add faux berry branches to give extra texture. I love embellishing the banisters on the stairs, too, and tend to add more and more decorations as we get closer to the big day – I’m particularly keen on red velvet bows, so they’ll be everywhere!
MY INSPIRATIONS
My team and I start planning our festive homeware collection a year in advance, straight after Christmas, in fact. This means the celebrations are fresh in everyone’s heads, which is perfect as I love to find out how everyone experiences Christmas and hear all about their own special traditions. The whole design journey is collaborative. Our design process is informed by several things. We like to know what our customers are doing and use social media to see how they’re enjoying our pieces in their homes. Their feedback is so important to us. Travelling to the Christmas trade fairs is always so inspiring, and it’s where we start to put everything together for the upcoming collection. We look at the festive issues of magazines from previous year for ideas, too.
Of all the pieces in our Christmas collection, my favourite is the Mistletoe china. With its simple trailing design and obvious connotations of love, I believe that it has real year-round appeal.