By Anand Holla
The refined elegance of Katharine Pooley’s luxury design and lifestyle boutique echoes her multi-hued personality. That’s a terrific selling point because the famed British interior designer has allowed her love for travel and adventure — summiting some of the world’s highest mountains, crossing the Sahara on horseback, or driving a dog sled across the Arctic — translate into her design philosophy.
Togged in a turquoise dress, Pooley saunters past the finest décor sprawled across 3,000 square feet of her shop at The Gate Mall, and reveals how she gets it right. “The house speaks to me. I just do my best to listen what the house has to say,” she says. And as we all know, the house always wins.
For the award-winning designer who has travelled 255 countries and lived and worked in Bahrain, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Vietnam, flagging off her first international outpost in Doha was a pleasant happenchance.
Nasser H al-Ansari, Qatari businessman and Chairman of the franchisee Octagon International Qatar, was so taken in by Pooley’s VIP suites at Heathrow Terminal 5 that he got her to design his new villa in Doha.
“And he loved it so much that he wanted to open this store,” says Pooley. Al-Ansari was part of Doha’s crème de la crème that landed at her boutique Tuesday evening to celebrate its first anniversary. Sporting a lavish overhaul and peppered with interesting designer collaborations, Pooley’s boutique has gone all out to cater to the Qatari taste by incorporating more colour into its collection and mixing the classical with the contemporary.
“The old generation prefers classical décor that’s heavier and darker, while the young opt for more contemporary, less fussy choices with lighter colours,” she says, “It’s important to remember that one must listen to what they want, not what they need.”
Having worked as a banker in Asia, Pooley feels she is in tune with the economics of her creative pursuit. “I understand that every home is an investment,” she says. When she quit her bank job, Pooley took a year off to do up the interior of Forter Castle in Scotland. Pleased with the result and the responses, Pooley embraced her calling.
“Ninety per cent of my job is everywhere around the world, and not London. I do homes everywhere, from India to Australia,” she says, “There are so many different, amazing cultures and I love incorporating them in what I do.”
While channeling cultures is important, much depends on the client. “You are not just dealing with cultures, you are dealing with individual tastes and personality. It’s about reading the person as well as the country, culture and the designs,” she says. To deconstruct the clients’ taste, Pooley interviews them. “It’s crucial to draw out information on preferences from the clients to understand their requirements,” she says.
Her premium home décor is not about expense, but about quality, insists she. “It’s not wrapped in diamonds, it’s wrapped in home… your home,” she reasons, “We are not decorators, we are interior architects. We do spatial planning. Most people nowadays have more than one home and are trying to get investments on them. So we do developments as well.”
The three key factors Pooley minds are budgets, quality, and listening to the client. “I feel I am lucky that once I meet the client, I can understand their requirements and what they need. Then I visualise it, put it on drawings, fix a budget, procure, and finally install. But it doesn’t end there. We are always there for the client; it’s a lifetime’s service,” she says.
As for procurement, there is no country that’s too far for Pooley’s assignments. “While the British craftsmanship is phenomenal, we get our procurements from all over the world. For joinery (woodworking joints), it is Dubai or Kuwait. France, India and Germany have fantastic beading, while we get our fabrics from Italy. It really is about value engineering,” says Pooley, “Everybody wants something unique and bespoke, and pricing is the real challenge.”
To ensure it gets goods at the best price, Pooley’s team approaches three different suppliers for each item, and negotiates for the best price.
“Quality is vital because you have a name to live up to,” she says, crediting her travelling for fuelling her ever-increasing knowledge. “Wherever you travel to, it’s important to filter in that experience, and incorporate that,” she points out.
“Most importantly, travelling affords me time to reflect. I enjoy when I am completely on my own as I can think about what I am doing, whether it is right, and how I can better myself. I am a big believer in self-improvement. And I value every feedback. I am always willing to change,” she says.
Despite designing interiors for high-profile personalities, Pooley cringes when asked to drop names. “Members of the Royal Family, some film people, celebrities… let’s keep it as that, shall we?” she asks and smiles.
“In Qatar though, I have noticed that if I have done one home for one lady and if she has two sisters, the two are not allowed to use the same designer because she likes to keep it quiet. What the lady needs to understand is that I can do completely different designs for different sisters. But here they like to keep things quiet,” Pooley says.
Having to put in so much of her into each project, does she not feel the urge to not part with some of her designer décor? “I just designed my own house around décor I designed for my clients because everything I do for them, I want a part of it,” she admits.
“The cushions there,” she says, pointing at a bunch of beautiful, fluffy pillows, “I got them in my bedroom as well. I love them because I have seen them here in my store. It’s a little tricky that way,” she says.
For all the luxury finery she deals with on a daily basis, there’s a strange irony brewing inside of Pooley. “I feel there’s a little too much money in the world right now,” she says, “Therefore, they are spending a lot more on beautiful things. It’s not just interior design, you see, it is cars, planes, homes.”
That definitely means good news for her, right? “Actually, no,” she says, matter-of-factly, “I’d rather we have a more simple life. The community is a little bit shattered.” Few would expect Pooley to say that. “Yes, because it is my world, isn’t it?” she asks with a wry smile.
And then she explains, “I have just been to Australia on a holiday with my two lovely boys — who are two and four years old — and I went to Kangaroo Island. I would love to retire there. It’s the most peaceful, perfect place. There are hardly any humans, loads of animals, and life is normal. Nowadays, we don’t live a very normal life, do we?”
She continues, “Life is very materialistic today. My heart is very much divided. I work in London, but my house is in the Oxfordshire countryside. My neighbours are cows and sheep.” Her castle in Scotland, which has been with her family for generations, doesn’t entertain mobile phones or TV.
“I am a contradiction of characters. I am very much living the fast end, but I had rather live in a tent than in a hotel,” she confesses. No wonder she loved designing a quaint yet fabulous cottage in Oxfordshire “for somebody very famous.”
Though she loves her work, Pooley can’t stress enough on the importance to have a “normal life.” She says, “Even here in Qatar, they say the divorce rates are going higher. We are under so much pressure nowadays to perform and achieve. We have too many things but we don’t appreciate enough. Really, how many shoes and dresses do we have? Perhaps, if we had just one dress, we would be happy.”
“I"d rather we have a more simple life”
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