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spark joy. “Growing up there made me comfortable with the idea of design risks, whimsy and – to put it honestly – hoarding,” she says, “and I could see how everyone who visited us felt the magic. My becoming an interior designer stems from wanting to show people how to bring that same sense of wonder, comfort and creativity to their own lives.” Kemble has been heading up the Manhattan branch
of Kemble Interiors since 1998. Her best-known projects are the public-facing ones: Playa Grande and a couple of similarly fanciful magpie-luxe hotels, the Mayflower Inn & Spa in Connecticut and Palm Beach’s vision in pink, The Colony, but most of her time is spent conjuring private family homes. Right now, her list includes houses in Kenya, Florida, New York and South Hampton, several of them for clients she has worked with before. “I love to be with clients through their lives and see the things that we bought together for their first houses become the things that make them feel at home,” she says. There is, of course, far more to Kemble’s interiors
than the stuff that fills them – her ability to make flexible, functional, person-centered homes has made her a regular fixture on prestigious lists from Architectural Digest’s AD100 to Luxe’s Gold - but she does believe that it’s the furniture, furnishings and objects we put in our homes that give them personality. “You should feel something for the things that are going to be in your house,” she says, “otherwise you end up with more of a microwave dinner of a space. I would encourage people to be always looking and, when they find something that has amazement for them in it, to buy it because it’s those pieces that will be the foundational things in your life.” This passion for emotion-inducing objects is the
CELERIE KEMBLE ON ENTERTAINING
“I’m a very informal, ‘my door is always
unlocked’ kind of hostess.
With entertaining, the point is showing people that there was care. That doesn’t have to be a moment of formality when you polish everything, it could be that you’ve
had a lifetime of collecting things and you’re including someone in what you care about.”
reason Kemble designs products as well as interiors. “I like to think about what has captivated me in the vintage and antique pieces I’ve seen and what is not available in the marketplace,” she says. Her licenced lines include an ever-expanding range of fabric, wallpaper and trims for Schumacher, the latest of which includes the beautiful handmade sisal wallcovering ‘Feather Bloom’ and a growing collection of whimsical-meets-modern lighting, accessories and occasional furniture for Arteriors. Each of these ranges is unique but, as with her interiors,
the thread that ties them all together is the imperfection. “That is the place I find beauty,” she explains. “In patina, in variations in colour, in asymmetry. I like to design products and spaces that look real over time because they accept what time does to them.” Wick’s face appears beside his mother’s on the
screen. It’s time for the family swim. Those wicker sofas will be covered in wet, sandy towels again before long but, as Kemble says, “homes should be like a loosely woven fabric of desires, memories, practicality, notions, even compromises. After all, life has seams and so should design.”
OPPOSITE: Kemble has gathered different textures, fabrics and treasures to achieve an eclectic look ABOVE: A collection of simple vintage straw trivets is dotted across the walls, picking up on the colours used in the rest of the room LEFT: Arteriors’ ‘Spitzy’ ceramic vases and Schumacher’s ‘Feather Bloom’ wallcovering, both recent Kemble collaborations
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