Inside Fiona Dreesmann's Sophisticated London Townhouse l House Tour_2

Hello, Homeworthy. Welcome to my home. Please come in. You're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. Hello, my name is Fiona Driesman. I run a business called Fiona Fines, which is based in Knightsbridge specialising in homeware. Welcome to my home in London. So we've lived in this home for 14 years. My husband and I have triplets and the home that we lived in before, which wasn't very far away, only had three bedrooms. And so I'm afraid we rather outgrew it with three children. And so we went house hunting and none of us could decide. And this was the last house we saw at five o'clock in the afternoon. And this was our home and has been our home for 14 years. Well, like most husbands and wives, when we were looking for a house, I want one thing and my husband wanted another thing. And the really big appeal for this house was the wonderful kitchen that we have, I'm going to take you to and show you. And we can have that as a very intimate space with dinner for eight or we can sit a maximum of 22 people. And I love to entertain. And that was the big, big appeal to this house. This is my entrance hall at home in London. And I'm a great believer that first impressions count. So I like everything to be quite tidy and quite organised. I was lucky enough to inherit some of these wonderful paintings from my parents-in-law. And then I have this beautiful tulip collection, which my husband gave me for my birthday. And so I'm married to a Dutchman and tulips for my wedding bouquet. And so we've always got tulips in the house. And this fabulous pumpkin, which I really love, is by an artist called Kate Malone. And I love ceramics. I sell them in my shop sometimes and porcelain. So this is from Kate Malone. The lamps were something that I bought up from my country house when we sold it. And this sets the tone for the house. And I have my study. And then we have our lovely kitchen dining room. So this fabric is, I think it's from Schumacher. And it's a plain wooden table underneath. And actually, it's the same fabric that I have on the walls in my study. And I had some spare fabric left. So I made the tablecloth to go over it. And it's got a glass top on it so that the fabric won't get damaged. So the fireplace was here when we moved in and we just changed the surround. And London is a cold city. And I love to have fireplaces going all the time. We are not allowed to have real fire in London. So these are gas fireplaces. And they're very easy to turn on and off. I can't actually remember where this came from. But I know that we put this in when we moved in. The fireplace was here. But the surround, we changed all the surrounds to make them just a bit more impactful. The walls are done in the seagrass. And it's a sand color. And I didn't want to have a gray tone because I wanted it to be warmer. And so this is just a seagrass. And it's really like a sort of very pale latte color. And it goes the whole way up my house. So that is the unity that ties the house together. It's the same wallpaper going the whole way through. We didn't change a single thing. The only thing I did to the entrance hall we moved in was we raised the door frames. And that was advice that was given to me by my lovely friend Paolo to raise the door frames so they were all the same height. And it gives a bigger impression if you can just raise your door frames. Just by a few inches makes a big difference. So I am someone who loves clutter. And I love things that tell a story. I'm very sentimental. I keep things from my parents, from my past, from my children. And this particular room that I'm sitting in was decorated by my great friend Paolo Moschino who helped me. And I remember saying to him, I absolutely don't want a beige house. I don't like beige. It's not a color. Anyway, he did this room and it is one of my favorite rooms in my house in various shades of cream. And it's never dated. It's been here for 14 years. I've never even had to clean a sofa with the dog who sits on it. So I do like clutter. I do like color. I love texture. And I think that expresses my personality rather than a more modern home. I'm not a contemporary person. And so I like the fact that my home really tells a story about me and our life and our family. I love most about my home my study, actually, and my bedroom. But my home is my sanctuary. And I really love the fact that when I come in and I close the door, it's my home. It's my space. I love that we have a little crazy dog that runs around the house. Not so much anymore. He's getting old. But I love the fact that I've got all my children at home. And that's what a home should be. Sometimes tidy. I'm a very tidy person. I like it all tidy. I'm a little bit organized. And I like that. So walking through into my study, this is my absolute sanctuary. This room in this house has been changed three times since we lived here. It was a study when I first moved in. It became a dining room. We never used it. And it's now gone back to my study. And this room has fabric on the walls. So all of the fabric behind me is the same fabric that I have in my entrance hall. And it's from Schumacher. And I love fabric on the walls. I find it really cozy. I find it absorbs the sound. My study doesn't have a television in it. I'm not a big TV watcher. And I love just to sit here. I like always have the fire on. And I have a lot of coffee table books, which I enjoy looking at and getting inspiration from. My absolute centerpiece is my desk. And this desk is where I sit. And I write my thank you letters. And I'm a real stickler for writing letters. I still write them. And it's got all my memorabilia on it. I collect pugs. I have Stanley the pug. So I have a little pug collection. I've got pictures of my mother, of me as a child with my sister. And then a very sentimental piece is this high chair. And in the high chair, I sat as a small wee babe having my probably breakfast, lunch, and supper. And I remember sitting in it. Of course, it wouldn't pass any health and safety today. But I love it. And that's my high chair. Going around here, I've got another Cate Malone pumpkin, my ceramics. These beautiful flowers are made of porcelain. And flowers are really, really important to me in my house. But flowers are expensive. And so I buy porcelain ones. And then I've got them forever. I do do fresh flowers as well. But I like the mixture of porcelain as well. And this is a lovely bronze made by an artist in Paris just with one magnolia on it. And that's my leopard fireplace, which I love. This was recommended to me as a fabric by Isabella Worsley. And she helped me do this room. And she's actually my niece. And so we chose the fringing. I like fringing. I like cording. I like extra bullion. And this cushion here, this was a fabric sample that I had. And I loved and was my color palette inspiration. And actually, I kept the sample and just put a velvet on the back and put the cut roof fringing around it. And so that's how this is. And then all these things, this was a lovely thing that was given to me by one of my daughter's friends that came back from India. And I just think to break it up a little bit. So I try not to have it too matchy matchy, because I am very guilty of having matchy matchy. The rug is cut out around the fireplace. And because this was originally a dining room, we had a stone floor underneath it. And I didn't want to pull the stone up. So it's just got a small board around it. And actually, it made me really push my boundaries. I'm not a blue person. And this has got an Air Force blue and brown on it. But it really ties the whole room together. And that's where Isabella said to me, come on Fiona, push your boundaries and have it. And I'm really pleased that she did. Well, I just like the cozy, you know, I like the autumnal colors. I like greens and rusts and all those very warm colors. They're with me throughout the house. And I really don't have any blue anywhere in my house. London, I find, doesn't really lend itself to blue. You know, in the States and other lovely hot countries, there's a lot of blue. But London is a cold country. And so I like warm colors. All these homes in the Vale were really turn of the century. And we live in the middle of London. So London's a noisy city. And I have the most fantastic secondary glazing. I don't even hear if an ambulance drives past. So that is so important in London to have that secondary glazing. And I have sheer blinds because obviously it's on the street level. And as lovely as everybody is walking past down the street, I do value my privacy and not have everybody looking in the whole time. So the sheers are down all the time. And in the winter, I close the curtains for coziness. But otherwise, I leave the curtains open all the time. As I said before, I'm very sentimental. And this chair was in my mother's bedroom. When my mother passed away three years ago, I really wanted this chair. And I know it's a small chair for this room. I actually sit in it quite often because I haven't got to plump up a cushion. And so we covered that fabric. And I cannot remember where that fabric is from, so I'm sorry. But that's that little chair. And sentimental things that I have is this beautiful big Meissen centerpiece. That was on my dining table most of my childhood. And so it was one of the things that nobody else, my brothers and sisters, didn't want. And so I had it. So it might not be the perfect match for this room, but it's a piece of my mother who I was incredibly close to with me every single day, along with her photographs and my pugs and my children. I can probably squeeze this out and show you. This is my crush, everything. These were my son's first ever shoes. So I had these little slippers made for him. And so then when he didn't fit them anymore, I put them in here and kept them in my desk. So my desk really is my little sentimental piece of everything that's going on. From porcelain flowers to this picture was drawn and painted by my mother-in-law. And I love my little bouquet of flowers. That's just my little bolt hole here. My career path. So I started off wanting to work in interiors. And my first job was working for a interior design company called Blanchards, which no longer exists, on Sloan Street. I decided within about two months that I absolutely hated working interior design and that really I was a salesperson. And I absolutely love selling. I'm married to a retailer. Our family business is department stores. And we have those in and around the suburbs of London. And then six years ago, I started Fiona Fiennes. But I have always been in sales. I sold jewelry for a little bit while. I helped sell houses for Knight Frank, really in my youth. I'm no spring chicken. So I've had quite a varied career. But fundamentally, I love selling. And that has been my biggest draw in life. And what I enjoy the most is being on the shop floor and interacting with clients and with people and hearing about what they like. I'm a kind of a people person. All the cupboards were in the kitchen. And we just put mirrors on the front of them to give it a much bigger effect and not make it look so kitcheny. We have a couple of bar stools where we have a quick breakfast together, or my husband and I, or if a couple of children are sitting here, they will sit at the at the bar where we cook in front of cook in front of everybody. And I for me, it's the sort of heart of a family home is the sort of kitchen. This they can sit down and then we have the table here, which I've laid today for six people. And tables are my passion. It's what I do. I sell things to make homes look beautiful with their tables. And so tonight, we are actually having six friends round for supper. And I have been very lucky and I have called a fabulous friend of mine who is a florist to say help. I do the flowers all the time myself. But today, I decided is that it's when I do the last Friday of a month or do it or I do a big dinner, I call a florist in and he just literally helps me put it together. So my lovely Rob has come in and put all these delicious flowers in for our dinner tonight. We've got six friends coming round. I collected these plates years ago. These are painted by Pinto Paris. Alberto Pinto was still alive at the time. These are hand painted all with cabbages on them. And I've taken a dusty pink tablecloth to pick out the dusty pink of the walls. I spoiled myself last year and had this wonderful cabinet built to house my ever-growing collection of china. It is a weakness and it hadn't stopped. I'm going to continue to grow more and more china on. And this goes out into the garden and I can open the doors and show you. This is if it was summer's evening, we could open both of these doors and we would have indoor outdoor dining. So I'm afraid it's not such a sunny day today, but that would be indoor outdoor dining. And that is really what sold us this house. I think you can agree with me. It's pretty spectacular. So the table setting I've used today is with the Pinto plates. I have silver cutlery that was some of them, it was my husband's, some of it was my grandmother's. And I don't like everything to match. And I think old silver is really lovely. And these are just the classic fishtail. These are white wine and red wine glasses and a water glass, which we bought when we were on Murano. So a souvenir, as I like to call it. Some people like a postcard. I like a set of glasses. I always put silver salt and peppers in between each person so you can share. Two people, one salt and pepper, so no one's passing everything around the table. The flowers are lovely sweet peas and lilacs, which I think are divine for this time of year. And I have a monogrammed linen napkin with D for Driesman, my surname, going on that. I love to change. I've got, oh, I don't know, maybe eight sets of dinner services. And because we're in this kitchen, six works really well. I cook for dinner and tonight we'll be having something very simple, but I cook it. And what we can do, and I often do, is we take this table away and we can lay one long table and we can seat 22 people for dinner in here. And that is, it's really great to be able to entertain. I love to host people. I need to do it more often. I need to do it because I have this lovely house and I love doing it. But I change my table settings regularly and I have about four or five different cloths. And I, but I like the dusty pink because blush is the color of our skin and therefore it goes with everything. It's just a very kind color. My tip is to be prepared and to be organized. So what I do is we serve a buffet. And so I put all the bowls out here and when I put them out, I put the big bowls and then I put a little post-it pad in each plate. So I know when I'm coming to serve what I'm putting in each plate. And then I don't suddenly go, oh my God, I put the tomatoes in the wrong bowl. So I lay it all out and I know what I'm going to be doing. For me, the art of being a great hostess is being at ease. And if you're organized before you start, you will be a better hostess. I cannot abide un-ironed linens. I'm absolutely passionate about the fact you must iron your linens properly. This is a particularly difficult table cloth to iron. Whilst I iron it downstairs, I re-iron it when it's on the table. And obviously, if you have a wooden table, you need to have something underneath it. Do not put a hot iron on your wooden table. But I do love crisp linens. I think that's very nice to be entertaining in that way. And you can use a placemat or a tablecloth. But good entertaining really is about being organized and keeping it simple. Unless you are a master chef or a gourmet chef, just do fabulous home cooking. Everybody loves it. We tonight will be having a crab and avocado salad and a roast chicken. Who doesn't like a roast chicken and salad? And then for pudding, as we call it in England, it will probably be an ice cream. Very simple, nothing complicated about it. So don't try and be master chef unless you are a master chef is a big tip. Literally. No, they aren't. I do a chicken a lot. I do a fillet of beef a lot. I'm not good at cooking sauces, so I don't try and make things overcomplicated. I think keep it simple and keep it to things that you if you're entertaining, you might have a drawing room on the first floor. My guests have come to see me as well as my husband, and so they want to see me. You don't want to be cooking all the time when your guests are here. So try and do something you can prepare a little bit earlier and just have to serve at the end. Don't be doing hundreds of sauces at the last minute and too many vegetables, which require me to be in the kitchen. That's why I do something quite simple. The the chairs are very comfortable. In fact, they could do with being recovered. I had a girlfriend who was moving to New York and she sold a whole load of furniture and I bought these chairs from her. And so they're covered in a fabric from Fermoy. And actually, they probably need to be recovered in a fabric that matches. I changed the color of the kitchen about six months ago to this blush pink. It used to be more of a pale gray. And I decided that I needed something a little bit kinder as I was getting older. So that's what these chairs are. So I don't know who made the chairs, but I bought them from a girlfriend. So the gray on the walls very annoyingly is a discontinued color. So if I chip something, I literally have to take a piece of chip and try and get it changed. And we decided to have gray because it sort of worked. It was more utilitarian. It matched the mirrors. I would probably quite like to paint them a dusty pink, but my husband won't let me. So we've still got gray. We have the wine racks, which are all in a dark red sort of claret color, like a very, very dark Loganbury. And that matched with the pink walls. Highlight was here. Literally, we didn't change a single thing to this kitchen, as I say, except I had that cupboard made. We put the new doors in, the bifolding doors we put in. And there were lights that hang down from here. Now, some people love a lantern. I personally don't. I grew up and it reminds me of those little chef restaurants that we have in England or diners where they have lights to keep the food hot. So I'm afraid I took those straight out. And we just have ceiling lighting in here now, which is on a dimmer. So we can dim it at night, have it brighter in the day, because at night I think candlelight is so pretty. And I think everybody looks prettier with candlelight and it twinkles. And we have these great lights because the back of the garden is east facing, but we do have a lot of good light that comes in here. Well, the rug is actually a garden rug. So it's waterproof. And so in theory, if we spill something, you can wash it down. It's actually been here quite a long time. And it's seen a lot of life. And it's seen all my children grow up and the dog and friends and playdates. And I wanted it separate. So this really is the dining area. And this is more the cooking area where everyone comes in. I've got a sofa where my children can come in and sit down on. My husband might chat to me while I'm cooking, if it's just the two of us at home. And I wanted it to feel a really sort of lived in space, not just a utilitarian kitchen. So these plates which are hung on the wall are the Floridanica plates from Royal Copenhagen. And my husband and I went to Copenhagen for the weekend. And I wanted to buy another souvenir of plates. And then I realized just how unbelievably expensive Floridanica plates are. So I found these five plates at auction. And so I bought them and they hang on the wall. I've used four of them once for a dinner for a friend of mine who also loves porcelain. And she said, oh, my goodness, I've never, ever eaten off Floridanica before. And I said, well, you probably won't ever again, because it's now back on the wall up here. And this is a picture of Our Late Majesty, which I absolutely love from Chris Levine. And my husband gave that to me for my birthday about 10 years ago. Actually, I think could be longer. I can't remember. But I particularly love that picture. Well, for me, I really love to have the flowers in the house. I really think flowers, my house without flowers is not a home. So I love flowers. And the thing that I do from time to time to make it range is I'll change my cushions. So sometimes I might want a more of a wintry feel. If it's winter, I might put a velvet cushion and then I might have a linen one in the summer. So I do change things around. I like the photographs. But I just like objects and sort of souvenirs, if you like, when we've been on a holiday or they've told a story. Family mementos, those really, for me, make a home. Otherwise, I feel that I could be living in a hotel room. And I don't love a hotel, but I don't want to live in a hotel room. So thank you for coming to film my home, Homeworthy. And I hope you've enjoyed the tour. I've got to go back to work. It's been lovely having you. Thanks for watching. Go to homeworthy.com for exclusive content and shopping guides.