Impact is the key to great style, says Kimi O’Neill. Don’t wear just a red dress, she advises, but ‘red tights and red shoes, a red hat – the whole thing’. As a stylist who has dressed everyone from Alice Cooper to Gwendoline Christie, she’s something of an authority on the subject. The rules of fashion might not always translate to interiors, but when it came to designing the kitchen in her 18th-century farmhouse in Yorkshire, Kimi heeded her own advice. She picked a metal, a wood grain and a colour – and went all in.
Stainless steel was the anchor – ‘Shiny things excite me,’ she explains, ‘I’m like a magpie’ – and she had long been enamoured with a specific hue of Alpi wood. When she came across Atelier Ellis’s ‘Morandi’ paint, which she describes as the perfect ‘dirty yellow’ shade, the moodboard was set. If the room seems bathed in buttery light, it is not solely the result of skilled photography (which in this case happens to be by Kimi’s partner, photographer and director Alastair Strong); the space glows because every material has been selected for its beauty and tactility, for the way it reflects or holds light – even down to the hand-thrown ceramic water filter.
When the couple bought the house – set in an acre of orchards in the Howardian Hills in North Yorkshire – the kitchen was top of the list for renovation. ‘It is the heart of the home – it’s corny but true,’ says Kimi. They were blessed with a parquet floor that just needed stripping and staining. They left the old chimneypiece untouched, adding a vintage fireguard from The Peanut Vendor, and were determined to keep the natural undulation of the old walls. Curves connect standalone pieces such as the island, the custom-made larder and the bespoke plaster hood over the buttermilk-coloured Everhot range. ‘Everything is a bit off in our house,’ she says. ‘So we decided to embrace the unevenness.’
Such a contemporary design could jar in a 275-year-old space, but it doesn’t. ‘When my dad, who was dubious, came in, he said, “It’s beautiful and weirdly sits well in an old house,”’ recalls Kimi, whose inspiration was an old photograph of Ralph ω Lauren’s 1980s kitchen by Angelo Donghia, where the focal point was an enormous, curved stainless-steel island. Along with their designer James Stickley, the couple collaborated with a local steelworker to create their statement island. ‘It’s all hand-sanded. It’s like silk, so shiny and gorgeous,’ Kimi enthuses. Flecks of grey in the Alpi wood of the larder – which houses their large collection of Peter Shire mugs – pick up the silvery tones. Above the island, the bespoke latex light by LS Gomma complements the curve of the extractor. ‘The matt walls and the high shine of the latex, the matt floor and the high shine of all the metalwork – it all plays off each other.’
Everything has to earn its place out on the work surfaces. Save for a couple of pieces of art (including a wooden sculpture carved by Alastair) and a vase filled with flowers cut from the garden, most of the usual necessities are hidden away. ‘It feels clean,’ says Kimi. ‘And that helps my brain.’
Inside might be a paean to contemporary design but, outside, the land is being used in much the same way as it has always been – to grow food. The couple now have 36 beds filled with vegetables that Kimi plans to pickle. And the spoils from their orchard are pressed locally for their apple juice brand, Horses, which is available at Flori Bakery in York and The Notting Hill Bookshop Café, W11. ‘It’s just been a lovely little thing we do,’ says Kimi. The next batch is due this autumn, at which point they plan to tackle the rest of the house. ‘We’re slowly doing things,’ she says with a laugh. ‘It feels like we’ve set the bar really high with the kitchen’.
