Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen has been adorning both our homes and our TV screens since the mid 90s when – it’s no exaggeration to say – his appearance on BBC’s Changing Rooms revolutionised the UK’s ideas of interior taste and design. His distinctive, flamboyant style has engendered both adoration and abhorrence (perhaps in equal measure). Since then, he has appeared regularly both as presenter and judge on a wide variety of shows, all the while continuing his ‘day job’ as a designer and consultant. His latest project has been working as Design Curator with Rangeford Villages but before we got down to the nuts and bolts of my questions, he warned me: “I never hold anything back, you know, I bear my chest instantaneously. I'll show you my beating heart right from the very beginning”. So, in the spirit of sharing, my response was…
I have to say, I am a big fan. Is that very unprofessional of me?
You know, I'm here to be fanned. It's fine.
That's the impression I get.
I think the British are very odd about being famous; they start indulging in this ridiculous kind of false modesty. I think one of the big problems about celebrity currently is that people confuse being famous with being popular. I've never really gone out of my way to seek popularity. I'm always more than happy when fabulously enlightened and incredibly tasteful human beings – like yourself – decide to fan me, but the others can go and take a running jump. This is me: if you don't want this, then there are plenty of other wonderful people you can go and do a selfie with. But I'm not going to change so it's all about appealing to the cognoscenti, as far as I'm concerned.
What does a Llewelyn-Bowen Christmas look like?
Well, Christmas should be as traditional as possible – you should indulge in as much pagan misrule as you as you can. I think it's a moment of great magic where the sun disappears and is eaten by the enormous serpent. The midwinter feast is unbelievably important to us humans. We have to eat ourselves into oblivion, we have to drink ourselves into a puddle to just excuse the fact that we're going to have another two or three months [of winter].
I think people do Christmas all wrong. They try and mould Christmas into something that doesn't properly reflect who they are or the resources they've got. You know, if it's not all red and green or some kind of cod-Dickensian groaning board, then you haven't really ‘done’ Christmas. But then, there is also nothing worse than a minimalist Christmas – when you get some magazine editor saying ‘at Christmas, I like to trim my tree with a few carefully chosen hempen bows and some tiny little terracotta pots filled with absolute, meaningless nothingness’.
When does your tree go up?
When I feel like it. The inevitable adjunct of [my work] is that the next thing I know, I'll have an email saying Hello are turning up next week, you need to completely deck the hall with bows and holly. We have had Christmas decorations that barely made it to Christmas because they were put up so early.
Are you a fan of the festivities?
It’s not that I'm bah humbug about Christmas, but I am very mindful of being one of those grinchy bastards, that actually kind of likes it when it all goes away. You know, when you get the house back a bit, and you can get rid of all those Christmas cards.
I like January. I like to celebrate when the year changes. I think that is a nice thing. In the way that everyone gets excited on the first day of Spring, I get very excited on the first day of Autumn and the first day of Winter.
You seem so comfortable in your own skin. Is that true or are you secretly riddled with self-doubt?
You know, one of the problems with British – or English – is the fact we haven't got a single word which is a positive, affirmative word for someone who is happy about who they are. We’ve got to use words like cocky or ‘pleased with themselves’ or arrogant. It's almost like we have a missing bit of DNA that allows us to just be happy with who we are. We've got to constantly measure ourselves against other people, against other nations, against other societies, against other periods, and find ourselves wanting. I mean, that's quite cute in a way, and that's quite useful in terms of auditing yourself to be as good as you possibly can be but it's not the end of the story.
You've always been something of a trailblazer and your latest project, working with Rangeford Villages, is genuinely breaking new ground in that you are working with a company specialising in retirement living.
One of the nice things now is that now Hermione [one of Laurence’s daughters] is officially Managing Director of Llewlyn-Bowen International, Incorporated…whatever it is, is I now end up doing stuff that fits incredibly organically. With Rangeford, they were building Siddington Park (Cirencester) on the edge of my village and I was intrigued. I went in, more than anything, as a kind of a tease to say, ‘are you building another one of these bloody retirement homes, trying to squeeze my generation into an oatmeal trailer park, whereas actually, all we ever want is just to be in an absolutely beautiful boutique hotel?’. And they said, ‘but that's what we're doing here’. So I said, ‘Why don't we do it together?’ I can speak with complete authority and also some passion about the fact that design needs to be something that is available to all, and should not be denied people just because they're 60.
Every other culture celebrates getting older; flowering, fruiting, achieving a level of wisdom. We have this ridiculous over-excitement about youth. Young people aren't that great, particularly today, they are the ones that are riddled with self-doubt and absolutely obsessed with the way that they're perceived by other people. In the old days, and when I say the old days, I’m going back to the fourteenth century, think about the swagger of youth in the Renaissance. We are not that society at all.
I think people need to watch out because this generation of 60-year-olds is not docile. We are not the bovine herd. We are the generation that saw the Sex Pistols live and we've got 20 years to look forward to in which we want to carry on being us. We don't want to actually be factory farmed and homogenised and pasteurised in the way that we live. This is actually where Rangeford had me, they said: ‘we're not downsizing you, we’re right sizing you.’
One of the things I see, particularly here in the Cotswolds, is people living in ridiculous spaces that they cannot control, that are physically very bad for them, but because they have this sort of warped sense of historical duty to keep this big, all-singing, all-dancing presence going for future generations, it's killing them. The financial responsibility is crushing them. Rangeford give a complete alternative to this.
Was there anything in the design concept that you were made to include – or leave out?
No, not at all. I told them, ‘I'm not going to be your poster boy: if we're going to work together, we're going to work together I'm actually going to work with you. Me, Laurence; not Kelly Hoppen.’ My design is layered, it has historical references. Also, it can be Marmite. It can be polarising. It's like having a little bit of neurotoxin in the Mr Kipling fondant fancy. This is one of the things that I've always loved about William Morris; for every lousy tulip, there's also a rather nasty little kind of wizened bit of foliage. It is about nature, red – or green – in tooth and claw. The ornate, the ornamentation, the opulence – these things are stimuli.
Did you always plan to have a creative career?
Oh, my God, no. In school I sort of succumbed to the sense that I would be doing something very academic, and I achieved quite well. I always felt that I'd be a barrister – I think I was drawn to the outfit more than anything. But then I kind of quickly worked out that I could have the outfit and not have to do the law. When I went to art school I did four years of very old-school classical education. And I sort of exploded from there. I was with the Crucial Gallery in Notting Hill, doing very large, sweaty neoclassical nudes in large, sweaty neoclassical landscapes, which everybody loved: Adam Ant bought them, Boy George loved them. Then Jackie [Laurence’s wife] become very preeminent as a party designer with the Admirable Crichton. She knew incredible people and used to get me into style marquees. Then they wanted me to style their living rooms. And, you know, I then became an interior designer.
I never plan, I just surf. It’s like being a pirate; you see something you want, and you just change course. Don't just wish a gold-laden Galleon will come across the horizon because it ain't going to happen. But when one does, make sure you're ready for it. I always feel that all I've done for the last 60 years is be on the bridge of my pirate ship just trying to steer it.
And now you’re living in your glamorous seventeenth century manor house in Siddington, near Cirencester which is, of course the heart of Rivals country. Final question: what do you think of the show?
I don't think I've had such bad PTSD from watching a programme since I first started watching Game of Thrones, which was absolutely my childhood. We know Jilly very well, and yes, that is the Cotswolds world. I mean, I think it absolutely was of the mid 80s. Jackie and I were those people, in those shoulder pads. I was the ultimate Deb's delight.
I always get that thing, ‘oh, you live in the Cotswolds. you must go to Soho farmhouse.’ No, that's the other end of the county. We don't live in that part of the Cotswolds, with the Beckhams and the cows and the Clarksons. We live in the slummy end with the King and Jilly Cooper.
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen is the newly appointed Design Curator at Rangeford Villages
