Why your interiors are the ultimate autobiography16 APRIL 2019 BY STEPHEN BAYLEY

From your colour palette to your choice of artworks, your interior design tastes can speak volumes, says Stephen Bayley...

The pioneering early 20th-century interior designer Elsie de Wolfe had a splendid motto. “Plenty of optimism and white paint” was her approach to even the most daunting acts of transformation.

With this in mind, she set about her projects. An early de-clutterer, an enemy of mess, a soldier in the avant-garde of good manners, de Wolfe created memorably bright and elegant spaces for both New York’s Colony Club and Vogue publisher Condé Nast.

But anyone can become an interior designer. Most of the heroes of the profession, including Elsie de Wolfe herself, were self-taught. Everyone has the qualifications: the interior design impulse should be almost instinctive. As Mary Eliza Haweis, a Victorian author and feminist with an interest in these things said: “Our houses, like the fish’s shell and the bird’s nest, ought to represent our individual taste and habits.”

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