Stephen Bayley

Folly de Grandeur, by Nicky Haslam- review

issue 18 May 2013

Nicky Haslam is one of our best interior designers, a charmed and charming agent of style, a tastemaker for the sometimes directionless rich, a brighter star than most of his astronomically stellar client list.

Considering a joint project, I asked him over lunch to tell me all the amazing people he had met. He demurred, but later that afternoon I got a 20-page handwritten document and on page one the names included John Kennedy, Svetlana Stalin, Picasso and Elvis.

But Nicky is perhaps better known to Spectator readers as a contributor of meticulous, gossipy, beautifully crafted, super-well-informed and often rather saucy accounts of what used to be called high society. But how to describe the man to a reader who has not met him? He is elegant, witty, exquisitely mannered, enjoys a party and is generous as a host.

Naturally, he has a good eye, whose vision he applies to himself.

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