A WILD WORLD
The colourful house that you see in these pictures does not belong to Dame Denise L’Estrange-Corbet, but having admired it once in an interiors magazine and, by chance, struck up a friendship with its owner several years later, she insisted to us in her famously forthright way that it be the backdrop for our shoot.
“I phoned her yesterday,” says Denise towards the end of our first meeting, when the shoot logistics are brought up. “I said, ‘Would there be any chance I could come and have my picture taken at your house?’ She said, ‘What do you mean? What are you going to do?’ And I said ‘Well, I’m just going to stand there and pretend it’s mine – obviously!’”
This is the way the WORLD co-founder and designer operates – somehow no-nonsense and all nonsense at the exact same time. Our interview, for which I’d scheduled an hour, lasts two and a