Sublime Design
Waterfront catches up with Kate Kingston of Kingston Shaw Interior Design as she the influences behind her ultra-stylish contemporary collection
interior design agencies as well as several awards, including the coveted ‘Entrepreneur of the year’ at the Merseyside Woman of the year awards. Te agency was celebrated in the ‘Oscars’ of the interior design world, the Andrew Martin Interior Design Review, which features only the 50 best designers globally. With big plans for Cheshire and London, as well as international expansion, a Kingston Shaw product line and hotel, there are no limits to what this woman can achieve. Born in Heswall and schooled in North Wales, with a short stint in Paris, where she became fluent in French, Kate set up her first business, Kingston Interiors, in Los Angeles when she was just 23. Kate comments: “My father was living in LA at the time and sent me off to Palm Springs to remodel a house so that he could keep tabs on where I was! Tis punishment backfired somewhat as I loved every minute of it, from the layouts and plans to the swatch selection and picking out the perfect furniture. I knew immediately that this was my calling.”
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waterfrontmagazines.co.uk
ate Kingston’s career in interior design started as her father’s idea of a punishment, but has led to the creation of one of the UK’s most successful
Kate quickly found herself on a plane back
to London to take up a place at the renowned Inchbald School of Interior Design. Te rest as they say is history... Kate returned to LA to set up Kingston Interiors, where she stayed for 4 years, working primarily on private client residences. Kate comments: “Te eccentric English look and chintz in particular, was huge at this time, everyone wanted a truly British look and I was able to recreate that with massive success.” From her sunny start in LA, Kate returned
to London, where she worked with a variety of property developers and investors. It was at this time that Kate gained the essential commercial experience that has help carve her career. It was on a trip back to her home town of
Liverpool that Kingston Shaw was born. Since winning the Capital of Culture crown, Liverpool and its surrounding regions have been enjoying a real renaissance. Tere has been a huge surge of inward investment and as such, has been the perfect opportunity for Kate to demonstrate her skills on home turf. “Kingston Shaw has been going for 10 years now,
which is an impressive stint for an interior designer and, I hope, fantastic testament to the work that
we do. We have been fortunate enough to work with a wide range of clients both commercially and privately in the North West, pushing the Kingston Shaw brand nationally and internationally.” Creativity is essential in the world of interior
design, so where do Kingston Shaw find their creative flair? Kate comments: “We find inspiration from many places; site visits, industry shows, shopping trips and even stately homes and museums. Tere has however, been a huge shift in traditional methods of research. Previously we would spend hours sitting in our library researching and scanning pages of books and magazines, now the majority of it can be done instantly online. “Knowing your history is key to good interior
design. I encourage anyone who is looking to break into the industry to do their research as history dictates fashion, it dictates architecture and it dictates interior design. It’s great to look at historic influences, for example, understanding why houses had such wide entrances, owing to the width of the dresses of that period. So research is key. It does take up a large part of the working day as you are continually keeping in touch with trends. I do feel that it is important that we are not dictated
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