The great indoors with Roland Klein

interview by Judith Wilson

Above: Roland Klein

There can be few women (and some men) who aren’t intrigued by the notion of comparing the interior design of their homes to the contents of their closets. Many of us are well schooled in the art of creating the perfect capsule wardrobe, so there is no reason why we can’t follow those design guidelines to create the ultimate home, too. Roland Klein is a talented designer ideally placed to set his clients in the right direction. As an established fashion designer, now turned interior designer, he has a chic, neutral and sophisticated style, as well as a firm grasp of what clients need. ‘I never forget that it is their house,’ he says. ‘Any scheme should be about the client, not about me.’

Klein was born in France, but has lived in London since the late 1960s. Today, home is an elegant apartment in South Kensington, but he divides his time between this and a house in the South of France. Although Klein is comparatively new to the world of interior design, he has spent his entire career in the fashion industry. As a young man, he worked in couture in Paris at Christian Dior, including a stint as Karl Lagerfeld’s assistant, and – after arriving in London in the late 1960s – decided to stay. ‘What was originally a six-month job turned into four years, and then I launched my own fashion label,’ he says. Seven years ago, jaded by the fashion world, he sold his fashion business with the intention of ‘doing nothing’.

Yet fate is unpredictable, and precisely because Klein had gained a reputation for doing up his own homes with a crisp, elegant style, a new set of clients began to seek him out. ‘I started to get requests to design people’s homes, so in the end I decided to do it properly!’ Klein says. Today, he takes on just two projects at a time and clients come to his own apartment for consultations. ‘I do like to give a personal service,’ he says. He is currently working on a family home in Camden Hill and an apartment in Mayfair. His signature style, evident at his apartment in The Boltons, he describes as ‘contemporary with a twist.’ There’s a careful blend of inherited antique French furniture and contemporary pieces, plus modern artwork and ceramics, of which he is an avid collector.

Klein enjoys the mix of furniture periods and styles. ‘Good design is good design whatever the period,’ he says. He is also a fan of the neutral colour scheme. ‘My principles are the same in interior design as for fashion: it’s better to start with a neutral background, then add colour as accessories,’ he says. White, grey and beige are his building blocks, but unusual texture and bold shades or pastels will be introduced according to the client’s tastes. Texture, he says, should be attractive to the eye, but also tactile. Are there types of fabric to which he feels particularly drawn? ‘I love to use linen – but I like to use everything, I am open to all possibilities!’ he says. Roland is also keen to ensure that a client’s possessions feature prominently. ‘A room is a metaphor of its owner: therefore it should reflect a client’s personality,’ he says.

He recently turned down a commission from an overseas client, because he had not met him personally. ‘I didn’t know him! How can I create a scheme for an individual if I don’t know what they like?’ he says, with simple honesty. Normally, on the first meeting with the client, Klein asks pertinent questions: what sort of people are they, are there children or animals at home, how to do they like to live, how often (and in what ways) do they like to entertain?

For those with a smaller budget, or individuals who are happy at home, but simply want to refresh an existing house, Roland offers a restyling service. This may involve reorganizing the space, cutting down on clutter or assisting with buying a few new key accessories. ‘When I was in fashion, I would ask women to make three piles from their wardrobe: things they wear every day, things worn now and then, and things they would be happy to discard,’ says Roland. ‘With their answers to these questions, we could move forward.’ His restyling process works in exactly the same way, with uplifting results.

It is interesting to ask how, as a Frenchman living in London, Klein would define his own style? He pauses, and comments that, of course, because of his origins, his style exhibits certain French influences. ‘Yet these days we live in a global world, and taste has become international,’ he says. ‘But wherever you are living, great style comes down to the three basic principles – colour, design and proportion.’

Roland Klein
07960 824802, www.rolandklein.com