Charlotte Dellal’s rural reinvention | Financial Times

It’s one of those blue-sky days when the English countryside is not so much green and pleasant as indecently gorgeous. As we make our way through the Meon Valley, towering hedgerows shimmy by the sides of the roads; fields roll down to churches quaintly ding-donging; and coiffed sheep frolic as if on psychedelics. We turn through tall, ornate ironwork gates and along the winding drive to the home of shoe designer Charlotte Dellal, passing two donkeys grazing beside a black horse brushed to gleaming. Expansive gardens reveal a mix of rambunctious wild meadow, hint of tennis court and overspilling vegetable patch. Dellal – who made her name creating vertiginous vintage-inspired heels for the most glamorous nights on the town (taxis-only, please) – seems to be cultivating the bucolic idyll pretty nicely, thanks. 

Dellal is standing at the door of the whitewashed Grade II-listed Georgian manor house, between four Palladian-style columns, in a full-skirted, primrose-yellow 1950s gown, her hair set in a softened interpretation of her vintage style. On her feet are a pair of green rubber Dunlop gardening shoes. She has drawn on them, with chalk marker, little cat whiskers and ears – a nod to her brand Charlotte Olympia’s famous, and much copied, kitty-faced ballet flat. The style, together with her Island platform stiletto, contributed to her being awarded emerging accessory designer of the year in 2011 and accessory designer of the year in 2015, opening 11 stores around the globe, collaborating with brands including Veuve Clicquot, Ladurée, Havaianas, Marvel and Mac cosmetics, being seen on the feet of personalities from Michelle Williams and Kirsten Dunst to Kate Moss – and elevating revenues to a reported $40mn (£26m) in 2014, just six years after launch. In 2017, she sold a majority stake to the Italian group OLG.

We sit in the green kitchen, plush pink peonies spilling out of the sink and her Rhodesian ridgeback and pair of pug-zus busying about at her feet. The move here in 2018, with her husband and four sons, was meant to be temporary, while her London home was being treated for subsidence. “​​I thought there’s no way I’d ever live in the country,” she says in her husky purr. “To think you are going temporarily makes it easier, I guess. The headmaster at my sons’ new school told me I’d never move back…” she smiles. 

Everything ended up being an extension of me and my world

The granddaughter of British property tycoon “Black Jack” Dellal (who is said to have lost $1.7mn in one night of gambling in 2006), daughter of Brazilian model Andrea and cousin to Girls actress Jemima Kirke, Dellal is famous for her 1940s-inspired glamour. Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, Agatha Christie’s Arlena Marshall (from Evil Under the Sun), mermaids, red lips, bananas and leopards are just some of her go-to inspirations for both her personal style and the shoe brand she founded in 2008. 

“My brand and I blurred into one,” she says of her initial decade in the business. “In London, I would always follow that aesthetic. It does feel like it was sometimes, a bit, almost a caricature of myself. Because I guess you put on a persona, you become a persona when you are the face of your brand, you are the brand, you’re selling it and wearing it. Everything ended up being an extension of me and my world.” But it was always authentic: “Maybe I played it up, but it was me… old Hollywood glamour has always been my thing.” 

Dellal called upon the heritage-meets-contemporary-pop vision of architect and designer Ben Pentreath to help articulate her interiors style in Hampshire. “I knew what I wanted, but I’m not an interior designer. But with Ben, it wasn’t just about wallpapers, he also helped architecturally, making the house look like it should have – changing the façade of the house back, opening up the interiors and restoring its good bones. And we both love colour. Worst case, you can paint it again.” Most importantly, though: “I didn’t want to move into a house that was ready-made or that was 100 per cent perfect. I wanted a house that we could add to as we lived in it.”

She leads me through the network of interlinked rooms. “What’s nice about this house is it just kind of flows; we leave everything open”: the turquoise dining room with its vast mirrored table (“my dinner parties are parties, we never just sit down”), the “Post-it yellow” living room with its rose-print sofa and the bijou crimson bar that’s given extra pimp with Fornasetti glassware-and-goblets wallpaper. “We entertained in London, but here we’ve got real space.” June saw her hosting a Big Top Carnival fancy-dress party, with acrobats and showgirls. 

The family room is no less va-va, painted in a theatrical iridescent gloss. “An olive, moss with a touch of chartreuse,” laughs Dellal. “If we want to sound pretentious about it!” The boot room and bathroom, meanwhile, max out on fabulous florals, foliage prints and chintz. She name-checks the la vie bohème exuberance of legendary French antiques dealer and interior designer Madeleine Castaing as an inspiration. Her own bedroom and bathroom are full-on boudoir chic: soft blues and pinks, with every shelf and surface filled with the knick-knacks that feed her obsessions (mermaid figurines, miniature shoes, feline detailing). The overall effect of the house is country chic, for sure, but with vibrant, vampy retro vim.

I don’t want to be stressed any more – it’s just shoes

Art covers the walls and the through lines are strong: countless pieces reference shoes, including photographs by Guy Bourdin. Huge figurative pieces, including by Ella Walker and Instagram sensation Jordy Kerwick, make strong statements. Numerous works luxuriate in the female form (“I love women, strong women at that”), and more still are quirky commissions, often weaving in family passions: Kate Jenkins, for example, has reinterpreted packets and jars of, variously, lime pickle, Marmite, Smarties and Rowse honey with the family’s names.

The move to Hampshire had been made a little easier as, although Dellal remained creative director, OLG fully integrated the business into its Italian operations, including all manufacturing. But the company’s rapid expansion proved to be at an unsustainable pace and, following store closures in the US, Dellal was forced to put it into administration in 2019. She is respectfully composed about the demands and compromises that came with a global vision, but concedes: “The magic of my brand was in the details, and to strip it of that and make it a bit more clinical… It wasn’t what people were expecting. It was important for my brand to have soul and have a personal touch.” For a brand so closely allied to the essence of who she is, going into administration “was heartbreaking”, she says. “You feel like you’ve lost everything you’ve worked towards. A dream that almost came true, so to speak. It was a tough time, and [ceasing trading] wasn’t entirely my decision.” In the event, she salvaged her name by buying it back. “Not knowing that I was going to do something… or maybe deep down knowing I would do something, but not knowing what.” 

The years spent at home, much of it in lockdown and “100 per cent focused on my kids”, allowed for introspection and a new direction. “Making a home is creative. Even painting the chicken coop or designing the boys’ play area.” But it also inspired a broader re-evaluation of her life. “You are kind of on a hamster wheel when you are in the fashion industry, and I don’t think I would have ever taken a break, stopped, had that not happened,” she says of the pause in operations. “I was able to take the opportunity to reassess – to sit back and digest it all, to take a breath.” 

This year, Dellal has quietly relaunched her brand. Where once the glitz of London was its beating heart, with a team of 52 globally, now its HQ is a small converted potting shed, where she designs alone. Charlotte Olympia 2.0 is an evolved prospect. An Instagram post from earlier this year saw Dellal ushering two of her pigs, Gordon and Heston, past glitzy platforms and colourful sketches out through the stable door. “Maybe it’s easier to have a fresher take when you take a step back and see it through the same lens, but maybe not as rose-tinted.”

Unpacking her archive into the Hampshire house was both “cathartic” and an inspiration. “I’ve always loved making stuff; I always loved what I did, but thinking about how to do it again, it was about it feeling right. Having done it once already, I know how things work, and I asked myself, ‘What would it be like if I did it the way I wanted to do it, which is to still live how I live now – being with my kids and stuff – but doing small collections where I can manage it myself?’” 

Make no mistake, the new shoe collections feature all-out razzle-dazzle. There are still towering heels in sexy hues and metallics, and bejewelled kitty flats. But some platforms (such as Malice, £995) now have rubber lug soles; Grecian flats (£535) have garden-inspired tulips (a big feature of her own garden, in season); and the kitty shoes have been reinterpreted as espadrilles (£425). There are even sneakers (from £375). Especially lovely are cobweb-quilted mid heels (£615). It might be a stretch to say country-inspired, but there are definitely more laid-back inflections that happily read as a softened take. “I’m doing small collections that will come on the website every now and again,” says Dellal. “I want it to be manageable. Enjoyable. I don’t want to be stressed any more; it’s just shoes.” Sales are online only, and through Harrods. 

Dellal invites me on a walk around the grounds, designed by Henrietta Courtauld and Bridget Elworthy of The Land Gardeners alongside her husband, Maxim. There’s a pool, where Dellal tells me she held her Murder on the Orient Express-themed 40th birthday a few years ago: a tiny toy train, chugging around the outside of the water with nostalgic elegance, set the tone. Near the woods, she shows me the 11 chickens (all named after showgirls, including Rita Hayworth) and leads me through the wild meadow to the tennis court, which has been converted into a much-used five-a-side football pitch. 

I wonder if it has been destabilising to soften the edges of what was such a precisely sculpted vintage persona. Dellal considers this, standing barefoot in the grass. “I’ve removed myself from the setting,” she concedes, meaning London, “and it is quite refreshing sometimes to do that.” But, she smiles, she’s never far from a red lipstick or beret.