Profile: By Land or By Sea
07/01/2008
My style can be brilliant, rigid, rigorous, and wretched," says Lady Weinberg, aka Anouska Hempel, the New Zealand–born Londoner behind the revolutionary interiors of the Hempel and Blakes hotels, as well as many private residences and yachts moored throughout the world. "Whether it is a Palladian monstrosity in Switzerland or a cabin in the woods, you can tell that it comes from the same hand."Indeed, Hempel’s designs, driven by her oft-cited mantra "design, refine, repeat," run from Oriental to European and modern to bohemian, yet still bear an uncanny signature. "It just happens," she says. She’s as likely to reference Regency as Le Corbusier, evident in residential designs like a moated Queen Anne mansion in Wiltshire, a striped-and-checked New York pied-à-terre, an Asian-infused apartment on the Bosporous in Istanbul, or the rooms of her own residence in London (Robb Report, April 2007). She worships symmetry and is credited with catapulting an exaggerated use of black and white, now enjoying a fierce comeback in both fashion and interiors.
Hempel, who began her design career by outfitting a small silver stall on Portobello Road in London, has also created restaurants, couture fashions, and retail space ("My least favorite," she admits. "Too many constraints."). She also "decided to become an actress in the middle of it," a tangent that included a stint as a Bond girl—the Australian knockout in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Currently at work on Warapuru—a green resort with 42 private villas at Itacaré, Brazil, slated to open in 2009—Hempel says she excels "when given free reign. By committee I am useless. My clients must be imaginative and inventive and willing to go for it." She has her hand in yachts for both Benetti and San Lorenzo, having just finished a "big as you can get" model for the latter, whose minimal, whitewashed salon makes Armani’s yacht seem cluttered.
"My next boat is a stunning felucca on the Nile in Egypt," Hempel says. "I’ll marry that idea with a boat I’ll be plunking in the Oman as part of the whole experience of a new spa hotel we are building there." When asked what she prefers to use in yachts, she rattles off a definitive list without hesitation: "Contemporary sliding frosted-glass doors. Steel fittings. Dark navy canvas. Striped ticking fabric. Teak decking all over."
The peripatetic Hempel is involved with easily a dozen projects of incredible proportions at any given time. "I’m always flitting and flying between places with my team—we’re a bit of a gypsy architectural caravan," she says. "I could do nothing without them—we’ll have a go at anything and everything if we can have a go at it."
Anouska Hempel Design, +44.207.938.1515, www.anouskahempeldesign.com