Mozart Square

New luxury living

Daylesford Natural arrived this week at 30 Pimlico Road, SW 1, and its opening – with plants, flowers and everything luxurious and beautiful for the garden - marks the transformation of a quiet Chelsea neighbourhood once dominated by expensive antique shops (and an extremely popular neighbourhood restaurant, La Poule au Pot) to a centre for contemporary opulent living.

A sustainable, organic, luxury lifestyle brand launched by Lady Bamford, Daylesford Natural is the 8^th shop to open in London in the past three years, and the second in this area; the Daylesford Organic food shop, home shop and instantly popular café just a few steps away, opened earlier this spring, offering simple, everyday utilitarian items (chopping boards, breadboards, hand thrown pottery) of exquisite quality and craftsmanship, organic meats and vegetables from Daylesford’s own farms, and perfect coffee and pastry.

Right here, too, is Nicholas Haslam’s luxe interior boutique, charismatic former Vogue editor, friend to the famous and decorator to the very rich (think Mick Jagger and much, much richer). Marstan & Langinger’s luxe conservatory shop with its delicious lavender painted reed chairs piled with lilac flowered cushions, is a few doors away, while Semilina, an enchanting children’s shop (a must on our shop list), is across the street.

Joanna Wood for interiors is next to the Daylesford café, like Linley (below) an established resident, and a key destination for innovative home accessories and gifts. (A great new item here is the long, narrow gift box of brightly coloured baby socks – one for each day of the week.)

Plus One, a gallery for contemporary realist painting, faces Linley, David (grandson of the Queen) Linley’s shop for luxurious, often custom made furniture and home accessories. Howe at 93 Pimlico Road, is one of the most consistently exciting home shops in London, offering a mix of amazing objects from every period and style, originals or copies, and, like Liberty’s home floor and Paul Smith’s 9 Albemarle Street, defining the eclectic, highly individual look of contemporary interiors.

Trendiness is not the point here – good living is. Recently opened nearby is fashion designer Tomasz Starzewski at 97 Pimlico Road, the only designer label anywhere to be seen.

What else to note here:

At Joanna Wood: the game bird figures – feathered quail, pheasants and ducks; the clear plastic mounted fossils, coral and driftwood as home accessories – key decorative items.

At Dayleford Organic Natural: the flowers and plants carefully selected for their informality, as if they had just been gathered from the fields – the scented candles in traditional glass preserving jars (to recycle, of course) – the no nonsense, sturdy traditional gardening tools (including vintage originals).

At Howe: the inventive button back chair treatments – in a moment where the button back chair is enjoying a huge revival (spotted in fuchsia satin at The Shop at Bluebird, with reflective buttons on linen at The Decorative Antiques and Textiles show) Howe’s gives a fresh spin, deconstructed with rough linen threads dripping from every button. We loved here, too, the cut out white on cream cotton bedspreads from India, which Jane Churchill, the interior decorator next door, had turned into lush, beautiful textured curtains for their windows.

At Marstan & Langinger: the pressed glass in delicious colours – green, pink, amber – the hanging lights in pressed, distress silver metal – the embroidered cushions with a conservatory with flowers on the front.