Inside architect Michael Squire's new build home, photo by James Balston, from a story featured in The Observer.
Something about me: Serena Fokschaner...
Coco Chanel said that good design is 'the projection of a soul' which sums up why I chose to specialise in writing about it. I write for lots of titles: The Sunday Times, Observer, Financial Times, House & Garden and more.
I have perched on sofas to chat to Director Generals and a late, Elvis-loving Duchess, squeezed in to chilly trailers to interview enigmatic actors and told the tales of architects and florists; dotty collectors and award-laden interior designers.
Recently, a US-based Jamaican-born academic told me about how her grandmother’s prized collection of 18th-century European porcelain inspired her to delve in to their history. What she discovered was shocking. (You can read the story in the FT).
Whatever the assignment, I enjoy digging beneath the surface to uncover the tales behind objects. It's a design-writing cliche to say that possessions and homes tell a tale about their owners, but well, it is true.
What qualifies me to write about this subject? I am not a designer. My first degree was in English but since then I have gone to ‘night school’ at Birkbeck to study Art History. At Sotheby’s Institute I was lucky enought to learn about 19th and 20th century decorative arts: trips to William Morris’s home, long hours spent poring over the ceramics or glass collections of the V&A instilled a love of the detail; and how everyday objects can offer a colourful window on to eras past.
A fascination for design began early. My mother was an interior designer. I grew up surrounded by moodboards and saleroom steals. The lacquered worlds of Chinoiserie cabinets, the misty chateaux of a faded tapestry or the glow of an Artemide light kindled my fascination with interiors. Spare childhood hours were spent making odd things: fat candles, peg dolls in crinolines or hobble-inducing pencil skirts from Vogue patterns. Add to that an inclination to shirk from tidying my room in favour of eating Kit Kats and reading novels and it appears that, on reflection, a job writing about design was pre-ordained.
I was lucky enough to go to Oxford University to read English Lit in the days of maintenance grants, awards and no tuition fees. There, more recumbent novel reading was mixed with fevered student journalism. After university, I plunged in to journalism working at The Telegraph. I was also a sub-editor for a few years, honing and toning prose to sit perkily on the page: am apprenticeship that I am glad that I have served.