Columbia Road Flower market

Last month, I mentioned a photoshoot in Columbia Road Flower market for a feature Time Out was doing on creative people shopping at London's best street markets. The article came out yesterday so I picked up a copy on my way to a business meeting and ending up smiling like an idiot in the train stopping myself from saying to complete strangers in the tube "Look! c'est moi la... on the page!"...

A big thank you to the lovely Maggie, Shopping & Style Editor at Time Out who is also behind Chic Little Baby. Here is the article and below a few photos I took at Campania.
Yours, Karine, Design Expert (so they say :-)
★★★★
For botanists Columbia Road Flower Market
Our market insider: Karine Candice Kong, design expert (I swear I didn't tell them to put this but I LIKE it!)
When should you visit Columbia Road Flower Market?
"The Market starts at 8am every Sunday and it's best to get there as early as possible. It gets very busy if the weather is quite nice. It winds down about 3pm."
What do you head for?
"One of my favourite shops is Vintage Heaven at no 82 - it's the perfect place to snap up vintage treasures. The Yard on Ezra street is a mini fleamarket that has some great things and is always worth a look. Rob Ryan makes intricate and delicate paper-cut and we have some of his work in our BODIE and FOU online store. His shop is called Ryantown. Campania at no 95 is a little greasy spoon cafe a l'italienne, full of charm and inspiration. Ben Southgate at no 4 The Courtyard on Ezra street is a great shop for industrial furniture and old school maps."
What should you avoid?
"Don't buy plants and flowers from the first stall you see. walk around and check out a few stalls before buying to compare prices and quality. If you buy bulk quantities don't hesitate to bargain. Columbia Road is a great place to go if you are doing a garden up."
Top tips...
"Don't forget to take your camera and don't rush. Columbia Road is a unique place with a very special atmosphere, so take your time. There are a lot of interesting characters and it's a very creative place to hang out."

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Lutyens restaurant shot by Paul Raeside

The first time I discovered the work of Paul Raeside, was when he shot our Paulistano chair for Living Etc a couple of years ago.
His gorgeous shot prompted me to discover his gorgeous moody style here and write about Chateau Lartigolle - a beautiful 18th Century renovated estate in the South West of France and also a gorgeous venue for a French wedding...
Since then Paul and I have kept in touch. Paul has now relocated to NYC to work with the NY Times, Architectural Digest, Martha Stewart and various design hotels amongst others (pretty good isn't it!).
I can't say that I'm a huge fan of the Marta Stewart style, sometimes it's just to pastels, American and perfect for me but I don't dislike it either. In fact, I think everything is so domestically perfect that I can't simply relate to it but I have to say that her magazines have some great ideas and I found some pretty cool Halloween invitations last year when I was searching for ideas.

So back to Paul's portfolio....
I checked it out and I could not helped being smitten by his shots of the Quintessentially British Lutyens restaurant in the heart of the City in London (a bit like our new Quintessentially print by Betsy Benn - sorry for the plug :-) ....and since my in-laws are over from New-Zealand for the next 6 weeks, this place seems quite a nice place to take them for dinner.

Lutyens restaurant is another restaurant designed by Sir Terence Conran and the Conran & Partners team. The design encompasses the Conran idiom with subtle references to Art Deco, Modernism and includes some Lutyens furniture.

Pssst....
Paul is looking for a stylish agent (and not too big so maybe freelance) to represent him in Paris so if you are interested, please get in touch with Paul directly

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Inspiring London cafes to escape from the office....

I have been spending the last four days in Paris, working, shopping (more of this later) and talking with my two best friends (kind of the best part) about being mothers, being entrepreneur/managing a team of 35 people or 3 children under 8, being women. You can imagine how long our conversations were but amongst other things, here is one thing I'm going to do this year......

One day a month, I will just spend the day in a nice and inspiring cafe
to watch the world goes by and think.

One day a month, I will treat myself to some 'business me-time' to reflect,
imagine and envision where and how I want to take our company forward.

One day a month, I will give myself the time to think and plan
without being interrupted by emails, phone calls, or queries from the team.

So here are some of my favourite, inspiring places to be one day a month....

Story Deli in Bricklane (read more here)

Petersham Nurseries in Richmond (read more here)
Petersham Nurseries Café Church Lane, off Petersham Road, Petersham, Surrey, tel: 020 8940 5230.

Monmouth Coffee house in Borough Market, 2 Park Street London SE1 9AB

Chez Kristoff Deli, 111 Hammersmith Grove, London, W6 ONQ

The Covent Garden hotel, 10 Monmouth Street London WC2H 9HB

If you know any nice, inspiring places in London, please let me know...I would love to check them out!
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Happy Sunday in Columbia Road

I love it when weekends are as chilled out, inspiring and full of great news as ours was. On saturday, we enjoyed a long, delicious lunch with some friends and had - in a typical French way - a delicious meal that kept us around the table until 4pm. By then we were so full that the only thing we could think of was going home for a nap. This morning, we got up bright and early to take the same friends to one of my favourite places in London: Columbia Road which once again was inspiring as ever.
I found an absolutely gorgeous set of 6 wooden bowls (photo to follow) in Vintage Heaven, a shop I always make a point to visit each time we go there and which is also featured in London Vintage by Paumes (a book full of fabulous addresses for vintage treasures). That really made my day because I'm planning to eventually give a minimalist, organic feel to our kitchen (something like this gorgeous kitchen in Amsterdam) and they were just perfect!! Last year, in the same shop, I had found a vintage French garden chair painted in grey blue which I absolutely adore and if I managed to convince Steve to take off the carpet of the old wooden stairs and paint them in white, this blue chair is just going to look magical on the landing stairs!
There was also a beautiful, small ceramic Tajine dish for only £8 in white. I hesitated but it was for one person only and I felt I ought to get a large one like the one I saw in Muji which is gorgeous. But these wooden bowls are just going to make me feel very happy and content each time I look at them.
Steve also got a great winter hat as a gift for my brother from Laird of Glencairn which Mila wore and then later one they were both asked by a photographer if father & daughter could pose for him. I should have asked him what it was for....duuh.
Unfortunately some shops have closed down but others have opened up and discovering Campania Gastronomica really made my day. Campania Gastronomica is at no 95 Columbia Road and is like an Italian version of an English greasy cafe.

It is very small but has bag of character...The things that I really adore decoration wise were the gorgeous vintage and whitewashed country table, the montage on the wall of B&W photos from the 50s, the gorgeous menu with retro photos in sepia and the food was nice....nothing pretentious but tasty and simple. It's tiny, you have to queue to get a table but I absolutely love it and I really encourage you to check it out. It's a really shame I hadn't taken my camera but hey I will be back...

So given how inspiring my retro day was today, I couldn't think of a better home to show you than this beautiful flat in Paris. Rather than refurbishing it all, the owner made a point to emphasize the parts of this small flat (only 25m2) which hadn't been touched for the past 20 years. The result is very charming and unique.

The owner sourced all the old portraits on Ebay and I love how he displayed old paintings that one usually sees in a castle in his small flat. It's atypical and charming at the same time but it definitively works because the ancestors look at home next to Ferrucio Laviani's lamp Bourgie (edited by Kartell). I loved how he sanded the floorboards and whitened them with bleach which gives them a natural, distressed look. I also really like how the walls are half painted in grey and white. It's a very common look in old French houses but at the same time, it can look tremendously modern and it allows you to add intense hues of grey like the Downpipe from Farrow & Ball I used in one of the bedroom in our house in France without making the room too dark.

And the things that end this weekend beautifully was booking my train ticket to go to Maison & Objet next week and spend the weekend in Paris with my best friends from Uni. Book our ski holidays to Andorra with Elodie and her little family and finding out that there were also coming to stay with us in London for a week at the end of March.
I don't know about you but I have been really struggling being back at work after having a wonderful Christmas with my family and just having these few holidays to look forward with people I love really helped to lift the mood :-)
Have a great evening and I hope you had a wonderful weekend too. xoxo

(C) photos from Marie-claire Maison

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Sunday am in Bricklane, lunch at Story Deli

On Sunday, Steve & I went to Bricklane with our friends to check out some bikes. I really love East London (Columbia Flower market, Bricklane, Shoreditch, Spitafields). It has a rough, industrial and independent strike to it. It feels alive and creative. There is a lot of great graffiti everywhere, old buidlings with broken windows, old signs and it's a great area to take photos.

Steve used to live on Commercial street years ago so each weekend I just had to cross the road to be in the heart of Spitafields market. Unfortunately property investors took over and the old market was destroyed to be replaced by brand new stores. There is still quite a few stalls allowing small businesses or young designers to sell their stuff (apparently Topshop buyers go there to spot new talents) but the old market had a lot more personality. I don't know what it is with property developers that they have to turn everything into modern spaces with rents so high that only high-street chains can actually afford the retail spaces and then you end up with the same shops everywhere instead of interesting, independent boutiques!
Frankly if I wanted to go to a clinically, cleaned shopping mall, I would go to Westfields. Before its refurbishment, Spitafields had a very distinctive atmosphere about it and now it's...well another re-developed area.

Anyway, we went down Bricklane so I could check out some of my favourite shops in the area: Labour & Wait had some beautiful, handmade wooden chopping boards which were very tempting. Mar Mar Co had also some nice pendant lights from French designers Tse Tse and Shelf (a shop I mentioned in Decor8 when I guest-blogged last week) had some lovely prints and I still think their plaster letters rock.

And lunch at Story Deli.....the love of my life in London...

I hadn't been there for ages and the place has aged but I still love it. If you want to go there and try to take photos of this gorgeous, one of a kind, little organic pizza place, my advice is be there when they open. After 12 (on Sundays), the place fills up quickly and it makes it tricky to shoot anything without having someone's reflection in one of the numerous, distressed mirrors that fill the place. Story Deli place was done by Anne Shore, a fashion stylist who works for Vogue Italia and who has a gorgeous shop called Story on 4, Wilker Street, London E1.

So what is so attractive about Story Deli? Well, besides the delicious, organic pizzas served on wooden boards and the vintage silver cuttlery at your disposal in glass jars, it is the whole atmosphere of the space which makes you feel somewhere where time has stopped. I love the whole family tribe thing so I'm a big fan of their massive communal tables (which is also what I like about Monmouth Cafe in Borough market) and because everything has aged beautifully, you almost feel like it is your space, your home, somewhere you go back to regularly.

And it's all the little details that count and make a massive difference...the white candles burning on each table, the menu printed on brown, recycled paper, the take-away in eco-friendly boxes, the menu written on blackboards hung on the wall, the cakes beautiful displayed under glass domes, the bottles of olive oil with chili or aromatic herbs.

The only two things that I found a bit disappointing this time is the ugly, catering stainless-steel pots they now put on the tables so one can help oneself to napkins and cutlery and the floorboards....They used to be painted in white with wear and tear marks that made them gorgeous but now all the paint is gone and it's makes this wonderful space darker and tired instead of uplifting and magical as it was before but if this is your first time there, I'm sure you will still be amazed by the place and the pizzas are really nice!

(c) First photo of Story Deli is by Ed Scoble. All the others are mine
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