THE STYLE
We look at each project as if they were paintings: We start with a great blank canvas — in this case, with the strong framework of the house, the bones, the foundation, the scale, the proportions and the symmetry.
From there you add the brushstrokes — the furniture, the furnishings and fabrics, the objects and the artworks that make a home a masterpiece.”
Restraint and editing are the keys to gorgeous and timeless interiors. Knowing when to stop is so very important.
It’s very easy to just keep going and going and going, but that’s when you end up with something over the top that starts looking dated after a few years. The furniture, the objects and the artworks in an interior need space to breathe, so you can really take them in and appreciate them, and you only get that when you force yourself to step back and stop decorating.”
The focus is on beauty and quality over what’s trendy. We never follow trends, because what is trendy today it will be old fashioned at some point. We are interested in interiors that have a lasting quality and are embraced by a sense of uniqueness, integrity, knowledge, and evolvement.
We always try to buy the things that we find truly beautiful, and then let those objects become the jewels of the room.
We tend to favour natural backgrounds in order to punctuate these items, and it’s their assemblage over time that allows the room to evolve without feeling stale.
Luxury is not defined by a price tag. The price doesn’t determine the quality of an item, or whether we will use it in a project.
Everything we pick and choose, everything we source has to have a sense of quality to it, a level of workmanship that can stand the test of time. The word luxury to us is deeply related to the meanings of beauty and comfort, comfort on a physical, mental, emotional and visual sense, in every case and in every sense. Then all the choices work in harmony because they have the same integrity.
Know when to buy — and when to walk away. We consider ourselves naturally highly talented, resourceful, intuitive, well-travelled and very knowledgeable and experienced international buyers, so when we see something that we love, we buy it right away because we know that we will never find it again. When you find truly beautiful things that catch your eyes and your heart, things that are well made and correctly priced, things that have a magic and tell you something, things that will bring you joy and that will complement all the rest, you just buy them.
Our theory is that when you walk through an interior, you should never walk away and say, ‘I loved the colours of this room or I like this furniture,’ or ‘I loved that one thing.’ No one thing should stick out, because no one item is more important than the others in the scheme of the whole project. The whole room is an experience, and every item in it is connected to the others.
Whether we are designing a modern family house in London or a Moroccan villa, an exotic house in the Bahamas or an English country house, a Pied a Terre in New York or a noble Spanish finca in Andalucía, an 18 th century townhouse in Paris or a summer house on the Greek Islands or a mas in the south of France, an apartment in Marbella or a boutique hotel in Ibiza and a riad in Marakkech, all the essential rules still apply.
What we truly love is beautiful furniture, objects and artworks soothingly composed, and masterfully orchestrated, and there is always a sense of place for everything. It’s the silent elegance that stands out the most in everything that we do.
Everything will be edited and moved around again and again." At the end everything will fall in the right place!
George El Greco & Robert McLoughlin