A colourful Notting Hill house, creatively filled with vintage and antique finds
“I had no idea that I had a maximalist aesthetic until I started decorating this place,” says the owner of this west London house, Sasha Sarokin. “I would have predicted a minimalist Japanese style for myself. I genuinely had no idea. But when I was looking through books of historical interiors and other references, this is what I was attracted to.”
Sasha moved into the house, along with her husband Nikolai and two small daughters, three years ago. Built in the 1920s, it was designed to fit in with the Victorian houses on the rest of the street, but has a more lateral layout. “We were just on the brink of having our second child,” Sasha explains. “We wanted to give them space to run around without navigating floors on floors on floors and lots of stairs.” Interiors-wise, it was a satisfyingly blank canvas. “We loved the bones of the place, but it was just grey floors, grey walls, grey carpets. We wanted to bring it back.” As this was the first time she had embarked on a major project, she sought help and advice from Lucy Mayers, a friend of the family who also happens to be a decorator at Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler.
Although the house's layout generally worked well for the family, Lucy's one major recommendation was to get rid of a small box bedroom and reconfigure the upstairs, so that the main bedroom became a generous suite at the front of the house with a walk in dressing room, while the daughters gained a large (and enchanting) twin bedroom at the back. “People worry about losing bedrooms, but I think sometimes you have to be a bit selfish and give yourself decent living space, especially when you have young children.” The dressing room, indeed, with its clever stained birch plywood, is both Lucy and Sasha's pride and joy.
Sasha's career has been spent in fashion, a world which very much informed the decoration of the house. Formerly a buyer for Net-a-Porter, she is now launching a sustainable clothing business, Cloth.Work, inspired by her passion for vintage and by a Cambridge MSt in sustainability leadership. “Designers always have a narrative to each season's collection,” she says, explaining how she formed an overall vision for the house's interiors. “They'll always reference various dissonant points and then weave them together to form the narrative. So I did the same. Our house is 1920s and it has some lovely period details, but it also has a modern, clean-lined extension. I imagined that we were in the 1960s, and a woman had inherited the house from her aunt, who was a great art collector who had been filling her house with art since the 1920s. So in my decisions I was trying to blend materials that were popular in the 20s, like the terrazzo in the bathroom, with a lot of mid-century modern designs in the more modern parts of the house.”
Sasha's new line of work in sustainable fashion is tied up with her deep love of hunting for vintage and antique pieces. “My passion is a flea market,” she says. “The one I like is twice a month, and I'm there every single time, at 6.30 in the morning. And I furnish the house entirely from the flea market. My real pride in the house is that there's nothing in it that cost over £1000, and almost everything is drastically lower than that, down to £10 plates from French ceramic studios that you can't find anymore. They're just very rare, special pieces. I really enjoy that, because I was curating it, I could create consistency in the style, but at the same time I was able to play with different periods and aesthetics."
As Sasha collected beautiful and interesting pieces for the house, Lucy's job was to advise on pulling it all together. Part of this was knowing where to exercise restraint. “I'm often inclined towards the idea of ‘more is more’," laughs Sasha, “and Lucy corrals me. I'd be sending her pictures from the flea market and she'd say, ‘OK, it’s time to stop now.' We had a deep mutual respect, though, and she was able to provide a bridge between my Californian references and a more British style." Lucy's expertise emerged in any number of ways as the project progressed, from advising Sasha on slathering a raw wood table in mayonnaise to refinish it, to finding the perfect colours to work as backdrops for Sasha's collections.
“Colour creates such warmth for me,” says Sasha, “and the choices were on some level intuitive. I love yellow, and I love brown, so I knew what I wanted generally, but the collaboration with Lucy was so helpful. For example I knew I wanted black moulding in the sitting room and dining room, and I might have just gone for black black, but Lucy said no, this is the black you want. And she sent me Du Cane by Paper and Paints, which is this beautiful green-black – she just guided me to the perfect colour." The house is filled with strong colour, from the the cheerful red of the bathroom to the rich tobacco of the sitting room. “My family said, please don't use that colour, you'll regret it, but Lucy gave me the confidence to do it,” says Sasha. “I knew exactly what it needed to be, but I couldn't find the exact right shade. And then it turned up in the Dulux range at the hardware store. I just sit and stare at the walls in that room, I love it so much.”
As she worked on the house, Sasha realised, with Lucy's help, how deep the connection was between her professional passions and those she was developing for interiors. “My slow fashion business is all about caring for what we have – I'm doing artisanal mending and artisanal embroidery to customise clothes and make them more meaningful. Lucy made me aware that that was also what I was doing in my home." For Lucy, this very much fits in with her own ethos and that espoused by Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler. “If you have something beautiful made that you love and is of a proper quality, you will be able to reuse it, alter it, have it remade for a new house. It's much better than having a series cheap, disposable things.” As Sasha adds, "everything in the house is either vintage or antique from a flea market or a dealer, or it's been made for me by someone amazing. I feel very passionately about taking old things that might be cast aside, and making them so beautiful so that a new thing could never even compete with the depth and specialness they have. It's about honouring your things, and that's a very heartfelt philosophy of mine.”
Boz Gagovski1/8The artwork behind the sofa is by Sarah Woodburn.
Boz Gagovski2/8The doors into the hall were found in a reclamation yard.
Boz Gagovski3/8The dressing room doors are made from birch plywood stained to a burr-like finish. The space is often on show as the doors tend to be left open, so it was important to make it as beautiful as possible.
Boz Gagovski4/8In the main bedroom, the walls are lined in Pierre Frey's ‘Tam Tam’ design. The curtains are made from a simple embroidered cotton from The Cloth Shop on Portobello Road. The headboard fabric is a Welsh blanket sourced from the flea market.
Boz Gagovski5/8Murano glass lights sourced from an Italian vintage lighting dealer adorn the walls.
Boz Gagovski6/8Hunting for lighting is one of Sasha's particular flea market enthusiasms, and the Murano glass globe pendant in the bathroom is a special favourite.
Boz Gagovski7/8Th ewalls are painted in Zoffany's ‘Koi Carp’, with a frieze in Farrow and Ball's ‘Bamboozle’. The artwork is by Tom Lomax.
Boz Gagovski8/8In the girls' room, a playful feel was created with Pierre Frey's ‘Bain de Soleil’ fabric on the curtains, and Cole & Son's ‘Sweet Pea’ wallpaper.
