Interior designer Hollie Bowden: ‘Aesthetically, there’s nothing we would rule out’

“Creating interiors is endlessly exciting,” says British designer Hollie Bowden. In less than a decade, her London studio has orchestrated a sweep of projects — 30 since she started in 2013 — whose scale and international scope belies its fledgling years.

From the eclectic east London home of musician FKA twigs to a tranquil Scottish farmhouse on the Isle of Bute and the forensically crafted Cadogan Place store of heritage leather goods brand Tanner Krolle, Bowden’s eye for offsetting theatrical objets d’art and 20th-century design against a pared-back canvas of natural materials has won her a word-of-mouth reputation as a purveyor of wabi-sabi — the Japanese aesthetic that finds beauty in imperfection — serenity.

But Bowden, 37, bristles against the suggestion she has a signature style. “Some people call me a minimalist,” she says. “But I’m really not. In the end, it comes down to finding the most interesting and creative locations, and unearthing the stories behind them.” Describing her neutral-toned but art-filled interiors as “maxi-minimalist”, Bowden hopes her latest work will herald a looser, more progressive era for the studio. “We want to bring some colour and fun,” she says. “Aesthetically, there’s really nothing we would rule out.”

At the forefront of this new vision is an unusual Modernist home in a conservation area of north London known as Aberdeen Park. “The house itself is bonkers,” she says of the work-in-progress. “There’s this very reserved 1930s facade with a wilder, more contemporary interior renovation that happened in the early 2000s.”

The property inspires comparisons with Hampstead’s 2 Willow Road, built in 1939, the creation and former home of Ernö Goldfinger, the Budapest-born architect and furniture designer behind Trellick Tower. Bowden’s response is an unrestrained scheme featuring mustard and green glazed mottled tiles, and furnishings that include a pair of purple woven horsehair and glass bedside tables of her own design. The centrepiece, though, promises to be the open-tread stairwell, which she is encasing in a verdant cloud of deep-pile carpet. Part ethereal, part psychedelic, wabi-sabi it definitely isn’t.

The restoration of Bowden’s own five-bedroom family home in Finsbury Park similarly indulges her wilder side. “The house has become a bit of a laboratory for ideas I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” she says.

Bowden is creating the interior with architect Jonathan Stickland and her partner and frequent collaborator Byron Pritchard, the creative and maker behind the furniture workshop 1982. Their plans include a series of surrealistic murals inspired by the Texan artist Gertrude Abercrombie to decorate the nursery walls of Bowden and Pritchard’s year-old twins, Stella and Nova.

Bowden is also transforming one of the bedrooms into a dressing room to store a vintage fashion archive that spans 1930s tea dresses, antique kimonos and designers including Paco Rabanne, Jean Paul Gaultier and Issey Miyake.

It’s a world away from Bowden’s rural roots. She grew up in a tiny 16th-century cottage in a remote corner of Gloucestershire, where she was immersed in competitive showjumping. “We were seriously horsey,” she says. “I was riding before I could walk.”

Our houses were constantly changing. Mum was always tinkering with the upholstery

Bowden’s parents renovated properties for a living. “Our houses were constantly changing,” she says. “Mum was always tinkering with the upholstery or the window treatments.” Her interest in interiors began when she bought her own place at 18, transforming a one-bedroom flat in an old converted cinema into a 1970s-style jewel-box complete with mirrors, a dancing pole and a dressing room.

“I absolutely loved the process,” she says. “It was such fun reinventing the space, thinking about how it would work for my life — and sorting out the flow.” After buying and selling another flat, Bowden did a year-long course at London’s KLC School of Design.

Her career officially began in Ibiza. In 2013, while spending summer on the island, Bowden bagged her first client. “He really bought into me and my
personal style. He literally just handed me the keys,” she says of the moment she was given carte blanche on the 13,000 sq ft space in the secluded south-west village of Es Cubells, complete with seven bedrooms, a spa and dedicated staff quarters.

By the time Bowden had completed the project, the hellish 1980s interior of red marble and mahogany had been transformed with huge windows and raw plaster walls forming a backdrop to tactile materials such as hemp and linen, all set against rough-hewn sculpture and folk art.

The project won Bowden further commissions on and off the island, acting as a springboard for assembling her now eight-strong team. She is currently working on homes in Tel Aviv, Miami and London, as well as a 14-bedroom finca in an Ibizan forest that will include a specially commissioned patinated bronze folding door by the French-Swedish artist Ingrid Donat.

Unsurprisingly, recreating the undone Ibiza look back in London — as she’s often asked to do — has different results. While the plaster finishes, linen textiles and hemp carpets do translate, Bowden tends to offset them with harder finishes such as marble and steel.

“It’s not just about the climate, the light or the architecture, there’s just such a different style of living in London,” she says. “We need to reflect that — an Ibizan finca is worlds away from a Victorian London town house.”

What each of Bowden’s interiors shares is her particular balance between elegance and eccentricity. Her eye for sourcing objects has become the centre of her studio’s work, whether that’s repurposing a set of outdoor Russell Woodard wicker seats picked up at a Paris flea market as dining chairs in her cousin’s Notting Hill home, or shipping an 18th-century oak floor from a Belgian castle to lend the right patina to a Victorian home in Tottenham. “We want our interiors to look unique and well travelled,” says Bowden. “Nothing should be too flashy or high end.” 

In the new year, Bowden plans to open a by-appointment gallery in a cavernous space adjoining her Shoreditch studio. Already filled with antiques, outsider art and bric-a-brac, as well as design — such as Ron Arad’s Rover chair and leather loungers by Vittorio Introini for Saporiti — it’s a trove of ideas and inspiration for her adventurous clients.

“The bones of my interiors are often quite simple, but these objects are a chance to bring some personality and an element of the unexpected,” says Bowden. Big-ticket designs are punctuated by quirkier market finds. A row of shelves is decked with ephemera: Egyptian plates, wiggly candlesticks, terrazzo vases and kitsch animal figurines.

Seen en masse, there’s joy in the sheer eclecticism of these objects and curios, which often harness a long-lasting connection between Bowden and her clients. Though she completed the London home of FKA twigs four years ago, she still shops for her home, recently finding a green onyx coffee table that’s perfect for her former school friend’s interior. “My WhatsApp chats with clients can continue for years,” she says.

Not that it’s always quite so simple. Certain pieces in the gallery — such as a painterly monochrome room divider by an unknown Paris artist — will be harder to part with. Bowden might be better at sourcing than selling. “It’s difficult to imagine waving it off to a complete stranger,” she says. “You want to hold on to it until there’s a project that will give it a proper moment of glory.” Though finders can’t always be keepers.

Hollie Bowden’s showroom edit

The calla lilies

Have you ever seen a more interesting plant container? Around 60cm each, these fibreglass flowers lend a space a truly surrealistic feel. I bought them close to a decade ago; we think they’re a set prop from the 1980s. They’re a type of jardiniere that works with or without a plant.

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The rush chair

All my best-loved pieces tend to have a sculptural feel and its amazing to
see this realised in natural materials such as this woven rush. I found it in a Gloucestershire shop. It has a particularly lovely curved shape that mirrors the human form.

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The animal lamp

I picked up this 1960s lamp in London for my twin daughters’ bedroom before they were even born. It’s an enamel on copper lamp, cold-painted with all these wonderfully naive animal drawings. It ended up in the children’s bedroom of a client in north London.

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The recliner

This 1970s chair is believed to have been created by Italian architect and designer Vittorio Introini for Saporiti. Leather with a nickel-plated steel frame, it’s the most comfortable reading chair I’ve found, as you’re fully reclined yet supported.

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The Hollie Bowden bedside

Bedsides are always a nightmare. It’s so hard to find something simple and functional. I designed these with my partner Byron Pritchard. Created from solid walnut board, they give a minimal cube form an interesting twist.

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The room divider

I bought this painted screen from the Marché aux Puces in Paris. I like to go around four times a year. Seeing it was such a wow moment. Screens are so useful for dividing big spaces or hiding things. Plus it’s a brilliant backdrop on Zoom.

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