Renovation Series: Inspiration vs Reality
Lifting the curtain on (and paying tribute to) all the reference points that inspired my home – from boutique Parisian hotels to cool London restaurants.
A question I often get asked is: where do you take inspiration from?
Any creative practice, in my opinion, is the result of cross-contamination. We could open a whole chapter on this topic, but in essence, I think that in the kind of digital world we currently inhabit, where nearly every single bit of human production that was ever made is readily available for consumption at your fingertips, there hardly is such a thing as originality anymore. Everything has already been done, a million times over, somewhere in the world. Or – as filmmaker and writer Kerby Ferguson brilliantly put it in his documentary – Everything is a Remix.
What changes, where one can still hope to make a difference, lies in the curation of all these influences, and how you combine them to create a blend that is unique to you.
I also truly believe that a home is (or should be) the reflection of the people who inhabit it. In my case, it’s an amalgamation of places me and my husband visited/stayed/ate at, all absorbed, digested and translated into one physical space.
So without further ado, here are the people and places that shaped my home aesthetic!
Hotel des Grands Boulevards, Paris
Of all the places featured in this article, the Hotel des Grands Boulevards in Paris will always hold a special place in my heart – if anything because it inspired multiple rooms in my home. Designed by the toy designer turned hospitality interior genius Dorothée Meilichzon (also responsible for Henrietta in London and Palazzo Experimental in Venice), this place left a lasting impression after I stayed there during a solo trip to Paris back in 2019.