With China still all the rage, you can either go with the flow … or swim against the tide
| Text : Elizabeth Kerr | Photo : www.thinkstockphotos.com |
If you read these pages regularly, your first instinct will be that this is yet another profile of yet another interiors firm. In a way that’s true. But in a city like Hong Kong, where tastes, budgets and prices range radically, you can never have too many options. Life Styling Ltd. is founded on the principle of liveability and sums up its philosophy as one that “[breathes] life into space. It is our belief that our homes influence the way that we feel and that by changing your surroundings we can change your lives too. To have the opportunity of creating beautiful spaces is something we are truly grateful for.” Bonus points for being happy to work for us.
Life Styling’s small design crew will take you from start to finish in creating an interpretation of an individual vision. So sure, you can probably get up gussied up Beijing-style, but the decidedly sophisticated, avant-garde slant to Life Styling’s design is a tonic to Hong Kong’s bland spaces or “luxurious” frou frou. Which is not to say the tailored accessories, furnishings and wall coverings it sources from around the world aren’t eye-catching. They’re just distinct in “design ethos.”
Life Styling’s core designers are Dutch-born, South African raised Nathalie Edwards (creative director), classicist Kris Sabasch-Synk (a London-trained Canadian) and Tara Barot, who is of French descent but was raised in Asia. Hailing from, and training in, scattered corners of the globe makes for an ideally global team. Edwards early career in fashion set a tone of impeccable and meticulous design when she founded the firm in Hong Kong. Edwards has very specific ideas about materials and uses that she has no problem making into a bit of a personal agenda. “I sort of get my goat about something — when I see something I like, it stores in my mind until I can use it,” she said. “I like a lot of neutral but to bring in pockets of colours in the art or the flowers. Then the colours really pop. I love textures that you can feel … silk, furs, tree trunks.”
She actually used her Pok Fu Lam flat as a design showcase, and it’s dotted with art and paintings accumulated over the years from around the world, and serves as an exemplar of her, and her firm’s, interiors mindset: lots of light, lots of space, and plenty of individuality. “I like to do it myself and that way introduce it to people,” Edwards told Home Journal late last year. “It’s a lot easier that way for them to envisage it and come on board. And that way I see for myself how I live with it, like it, and then I’m able to sell it on to clients.”
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