The London Home Of Legendary Hair Stylist Sam Mcknight | Open House Tv

Hello, my name is Sam McKnight, I'm a hair, stylist and welcome to my home in London. Come on. Let'S have a look, so I've lived here for about 11 years. It'S an Edwardian house built in 1905.. A lot of the original features were still here. Like the beautiful tessellated floor. You know the door frames, the ceiling detail, the stained glass window in the back. That was all original. It'S still there and I kept that I don't have any kind of design aesthetic. I just see things I buy them. I do have a particular liking to flowers, fresh flowers, many of them from my garden, but this is just a start. Let'S continue, this is my living room. This is where I just Lounge. This is where I'm I can be by myself. I didn't move in here with an eye to design my own home. I just felt if I have a blank canvas where the structure is the original historical structure and it looks out to the Garden in the summer, then I can put in modern stuff. I can put old stuff. We'Ve got a nice fireplace in the winter. These lights up here I found in an antique store. They call them Sputnik lights, they have beautiful glass, flowers on the end of the spike, so it reflects a lot of light that sort of muted floral weave carpet with muted colors there's a leopard print rug that I bought. I have quite a few. I buy lots of jugs there's something about a jug where flowers look great in it, and this was my grandmother's jug. I'Ve inherited that which I love. I just love an interesting funky jug. You know the cheaper, the better. This is one of my prized possessions. This was a gift from Carl Lagerfeld. I worked with Carl on Chanel for many many years, and one of my favorite shows was the Chanel Supermarket show and Carl gave me one of the Chanel shopping baskets, which I treasured to this day foreign. I built some shelves which kind of became more shelves and became a library, and now my books are kept very well. So this is a book called Hair by Sam McKnight. Does what it says on the tin. I was asked to do a quite a large exhibition of my work. It was the first hair exhibition. That'S ever been done in this country. I then I had to edit 40 000 images down to about 900, which are all kind of packed beautifully in this gorgeous book. I put the leopard carpet there because I found it in a sale and I love a half-price bargain and it looked really good. So home it came, I tend to collect a lot of pillows because well you can't go wrong with the pillow. Can you I like things to have a bit of joy in them? A few sort of frivolous pillows can bring a little colorful joy into a room. These curtains come from the last place making looms in in Scotland, myb textiles they're called the pattern reflects the mood of the garden, really the birds and flowers and trees, and they do such a beautiful job. So I have now Scottish lace curtains in all my windows. This part of the house, which is the kitchen as you can see, this did not exist. When I bought the house, it has glass walls and huge glass skylights that just flood the room with light. This is my product line. As you can see, the colors are directly inspired by the flowers in my garden. What I love about this room is feels like you're actually in the garden. So this is my garden, and this is the reason why I fell in love with this place. When I first saw it, a garden is important because being in nature and surrounded by such beauty is incredibly relaxing. For me, the garden isn't about some kind of formal architectural display. Mine is more wild. It'S the same as the house. It'S completely packed. It'S probably over planted, but that's how I like it. It'S just exploding with color and it's incredible. I'Ve packed a lot into this little rectangle. This is my favorite Rose, it's called munstead wood and it's the most beautiful, dark, bluish red and the Roses get really big. They look like sort of crumpled red velvet, they're, absolutely Divine. That'S my absolute favorite foreign ERS in my hand, and I'm usually kind of snipping and chopping. That'S getting these sweet peas out of the way so that they'll keep flowering. But I like to kind of Potter around it's pure luxury, for me having a garden when I bought the house, it was a rectangle 120 feet long by 40, feet wide and I got my friend Joe Thompson who's, a garden designer to come and help me with The original planning and she split the garden into three rooms and this being the first Garden Room, is a kind of winding borderline. So it takes your eye on a bit of a journey. So your eye kind of goes to this path and then, as you come around here, there's a little surprise there's another room because from the house you don't know that this exists, then you can go through this room into the arch, which a few weeks ago was Covered in the most incredible roses into the last room, which is the vegetables and the potting shed, the tomatoes have started so we'll get those in a in a few weeks, and this one has got a little lost, but she's still she's still producing fruit. So we'll have those very soon in the next couple of days I have some kale leeks, peas, chillies lettuce. I got the Quince tree because I love the blossom of the Queen's tree. It'S really pretty in the spring, actually they're incredible, I cook for them all the time. So this is about Form and Function. It'S not just a flower garden. It is a kitchen Garden too, so the rooms are threaded together by these paths. Now I have to be honest: the paths are getting narrower and narrower other years go on, because I keep planting more plants. It'S an incredibly addictive hobby. The piles are Getting Thinner, but I think I'm always going to have some kind of thread running through them, because that's how the whole thing works. I like it when the plants spill over these edges, I'm not about harsh lines in the garden. I like the boundaries or blurred. I guess what I tend to do in everything. Is I push it to the limit, which is what I do in my job as well, where I've shown a little restraint in the house and I've learned to show a little restraint in my work. The garden is where I can indulge my excessive traits, so I've shown you guys around my place. I'Ve shown you my my private little Haven, my little Oasis in the middle of the big city and I'm absolutely thrilled to have had you here and we'll see you next time, because we could all use a little more fabulous in our lives. Right.