![]() ![]() 'Besides I am bohemian and relaxed, and so is this place.'ĭespite the building's size (four bedrooms, five bathrooms, two reception rooms and a dining room) the decor is at once soothing and playful - an ideal place to entertain her many friends she has installed a huge tent-like bed in her second-floor reception room where they can hang out, and once had a party for 200 people. 'I like the work of Zaha Hadid and Marc Newson, but I couldn't see pieces like that fitting into where I live,' she explains. She doesn't think contemporary styles suit historic London homes. Helayel's chairs, beds and tables are mostly Indian and Moroccan in style, bought from antique shops on the King's Road and in Notting Hill. So, with the help of her friend, the Brazilian artist Olivier Mourao, she has stripped walls and covered them with textiles, hung colour-drenched paintings, installed Jack and the Beanstalk-sized columns and adorned rooms with vintage wooden furniture, creating a rich, warm, womb-like environment in a palette of deep browns and reds. 'But,' laughs the designer, as her live-in housekeeper sets a tea-tray on the fabric-draped bed, 'I can decorate it how I choose and take most of the things with me when I move.' She also reveals how her landlady won't sell it to her. Descending a flight of stairs and entering the bedroom, she begins to talk heritage, recounting the back stories of her five London homes (she's rented them all, including this one, which she's lived in for the past three years) and describes enthusiastically how this house was built by a 19th-century coal magnate. ![]() Helayel's easy-to-wear, elegant dresses scored her a clutch of fashion headlines this summer after she supplied Kate Middleton with a holiday wardrobe Scarlett Johansson, Kylie and Keira Knightley have all been seen in her creations, as has Madonna, whom Helayel met through Kabbalah, though the designer hasn't been to a meeting for a long time.Ī sense of history is important to Helayel. It's an auspicious name that has certainly delivered. Helayel moved to England from Brazil, via New York, in 2000 and a year later started her label Issa, which means 'lucky' in surfer slang in Brazil - surfers scream it when they catch the biggest wave. 'Damien Hirst has a houseboat over there.' ![]() 'He's wiping out three of them to make a big studio for his photography.' Now on the balcony she waves towards the water where a row of boats dip up and down with the tide. 'Bryan Adams owns most of the properties in this block,' drawls fashion designer Daniella Helayel, as she climbs the final flight of stairs to the TV room at the top of her four-storey mansion. Chelsea's Cheyne Walk is one of the most historic streets in London, its snaking row of Georgian and Victorian town houses fronting the Thames like soldiers puffing out their chests on medal day. Keith Richards used to live at number 3, George Eliot died at number 4 and Dante Gabriel Rossetti was banned from keeping peacocks at number 16. ![]()
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