Perhaps Nicky Haslam’s foremost legacy is his established talent and influence as Britain’s ultimate interior designer, he is also known as an artist, author of five books, cabaret singer, book reviewer, art editor, memoirist and literary editor.
The Haslam aesthetic has been magnetising design cognoscenti around the world since 1972 when he first started practicing as an interior designer. In the late 1980’s Haslam founded his London-based architectural and design firm Nicky Haslam Studio. The firm is established as one of the most important luxury interior design offices in the United Kingdom, known for high-end design, bespoke furnishings and a style that is ever changing with the times, yet always distinguishable for its humour, charm and wit – much like Haslam himself. Under his guidance, his creative team combines a unique sense of history with a modern contemporary outlook and the firm works on projects all over the globe including the English countryside and London, New York, Morocco, New Orleans, Denmark, Montreal, Barbados, Monaco and Moscow, South of France, Mallorca, Los Angeles and Paris.
Nicky was born in 1939 to William Heywood Haslam, a diplomat and businessman, who had been PPS to his friend Maynard Keynes at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, and his wife Diana Ponsonby, granddaughter of the 8th Earl of Bessborough; Queen Victoria was her godmother.
Due to catching polio in the 1947 outbreak, Nicky was educated largely at home until going to Eton in 1953. While still at school at Eton, Haslam was fortunate in meeting the leading figures of the time, luminaries such as Cecil Beaton, Lady Diana Cooper, Cole Porter, Frederick Ashton, Noel Coward, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. He excelled in art under the tutelage of Wilfred Blunt. Some of his interior watercolour renderings – created based on select interior design projects – are held by the Victoria and Albert Museum as well as The Royal Institute of British Architects. On leaving Eton, Nicky spent a decade in the USA, meeting the architect Philip Johnson and the theatre wunderkinder Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein. While working on Vogue in the same period as Diana Vreeland. He then decided to buy a ranch in Arizona and breed Arab horses. As he says, “Who hasn’t wanted to be a cowboy?”. This was followed by three years with the film industry, and the stars, in Los Angeles. He returned to the UK in the early 70s and established his design company His first clients were Nicholas Soames, and Mark Shand, brother of the Queen.
In the decades since, Nicky Haslam has created residences, restaurants, hotels and retail spaces and gardens for a high profile and celebrity clientele including Mick Jagger, Bryan Ferry, Rod Stewart, Ringo Starr, Charles Saatchi and Rupert Everett. He has designed interiors in New York, California, Jamaica, Barbados and New Orleans, Moscow, Denmark and Canada.
Apart from his own well-documented parties, Haslam also designed the décors for many of the major social occasions of the time: the Opera Ball in Hong Kong and events for the Prince of Wales in London and Prague, Lord Rothschild, Sir Evelyn and Lady de Rothschild, the Cartier Polo gala, a candle-lit dinner at the State Apartments in Kensington Palace as well as a National Gallery banquet. The Nicky Haslam’s visual signature was apparent on a nightclub in the Dorchester Hotel, London, salons for the couturiers Bellville-Sassoon and the Emmanuels, makers of the wedding dress for Lady Diana Spencer (a cousin) and the Lichfield suite at the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong.
Nicky Haslam is the author of five books; a collection of his work titled ‘Sheer Opulence’ and ‘A Designer’s Life’, an archive of inspired design and decor, and ‘Folly de Grandeur’, a lavishly illustrated book revealing the fascinating history, decorating schemes and personal touches of Nicky’s long tenancy the Hunting Lodge in Hampshire. ‘The Impatient Pen’ a collection of reviews interviews and reflections, was very much admired by Barry Humphries. ‘Redeeming Features’, his autobiographical memoir, has been compared to Proust by A.N.Wilson and Tom Stoppard. Nicky’s opinion, wit and style as a creative writer are consistently sought by publications including American and British Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, House and Garden, the Sunday Times and Telegraph Magazines, The World of Interiors, Tatler, and Daily Mail as well as The London Review of Books, the Oldie and the Spectator.
Nicky now divides his time between his flat in Kensington and a classical lodge near Daylesford in Gloucestershire. He is currently working on several projects. He has recently collaborated with Annabel Astor at OKA, the company she created, and he has a line of fabrics called “After All” at Turnell and Gigon, and rug designs at Silk Avenue. Nicky’s latest furniture collection, Nicky Haslam and Colette van den Thillart Handmade by Justin Van Breda has just been launched.
Nicky is involved in various philanthropic enterprises including The Ponsonby Temple Appeal for Parkstead (formerly Bessborough House — his ancestral 18th Century family home) in Roehampton, the Soane Museum, Historic Royal Palaces, Maggies Cancer Centres UK and ASAP. He is planning a follow-up to his autobiography and has hopes for another season of his cabaret evenings, with the classic songs of Cole Porter, Rogers and Hammerstein, Frank Loesser and others of that golden era.