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Inside the Vibrant London Home of House of Hackney's Cofounder

by Rick Anderson

Visitors to Frieda Gormley and Javvy M Royle’s freshly redecorated house in London’s Hackney borough might want to pack a machete—it’s a jungle in there! Flowered papers climb walls and cross ceilings. Blossoming fabrics dress chairs and drape windows. Leafy carpets turn floors into meadows and the stairway into Amazonia. Vines dangle from newly opened skylights as thickly as fringe drips from sofas and lampshades.

“We’ve been referred to as maximalists though this place is really just high on print and color,” explains the Dublin-born Gormley, cofounder of House of Hackney , the granny-mod lifestyle brand that she and her husband, a native of Somerset, have nurtured into a cultural phenomenon since its 2011 launch. So much so that two years ago the couple—he resembles a dashing goth rocker, while she is absolutely Pre-Raphaelite—were asked to redo the Terrace room at Annabel’s, the legendarily louche Berkeley Square private club. Which they did, splashing the space with palm-frond motifs and potted plants—think Madeleine Castaing goes hippie.

All those botanicals reference what was the borough of Hackney’s pride and joy in the early 1800s: the largest hothouse in the world. “Palm trees were integral to this place, and that inspired our home,” Gormley explains of the project, completed in December with MRA Architecture & Interior Design. (The firm designed House of Hackney’s London flagship.) She and Royle expanded the narrow house, once a warren of bedsits, to the lot line. “Each person’s home should be a place where they exist happily,” she continues, “and psychedelic florals make me smile.” Whales, on the other hand, delight Gormley and Royle’s son, Little Javvy, hence the pod swimming across his walls; daughter Lila likes flowers.

Add to this dollops of Morocco, India, and Africa, cultures that make the neighborhood “a melting pot with great energy,” Gormley says. Moorish-inspired arches now lift doorways, while photos by Mali’s Seydou Keïta (“They could almost have been taken here in Ridley Road Market”) hang on the entry’s cream-painted Lincrusta. The neutral background comes as a bit of a surprise given House of Hackney’s polychromania—though, Gormley sagely observes, even brilliantly colored decors require moments of relief. houseofhackneom

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