The Sybarite visited Kings of Chelsea to experience first-hand the opulent Roberto Cavalli Home Interiors collection.
The 1,800sq-ft London showroom features all manner of leathers, hides, satins and furs in a range of exotic and glamorous patterns. Everything is customisable and completely bespoke – even the metals used can be chosen – and everything is made to the highest quality finish in Italy.
Kings of Chelsea is, in fact, the only showroom in the whole of Europe where one can view the entire Roberto Cavalli Home collection.
This is now the third Roberto Cavalli Home Interiors collection, Theo Mance, Kings of Chelsea’s Managing Director tells us. “With each collection, it’s becoming more and more sophisticated, the links between the furniture and the fashion side of the business are becoming more and more clear.”
“The first collection when we first opened the showroom was very contemporary,” Theo explains, “it was quite linear, quite geometric”. The second collection, however, drew a lot more on the revival, featuring shapes from the 60s and 70s. “Some of the tones have changed as well, going from bright reds and primary colours in the first collection to a lot of forest tones and greens in the second collection, which is very in vogue at the moment, but was already being shown in Milan in April of last year.”
“I think what’s happening is it’s taking inspiration from past styles but it’s putting a contemporary twist on it,” Theo says. “What we find with the home collection is that it’s being led by the fashion side of the business. We know that whatever we see on the catwalk will be actually on the furniture in terms of silhouettes and tones about a season or two later. So actually the furniture side of the business is quite reactive”.
Theo tells us that one of the most popular pieces is the Soho dining table. “It’s very architectural and contemporary,” he says. “It really plays with people’s idea of what a piece of Cavalli furniture would look like. It’s very geometric, very flexible in terms of the kind of interior you can put it into.”
The entire collection is hand-cut and hand-finished, with many of the pieces being made by the same team as the Cavalli couture clothes.
Kings of Chelsea, 387 King’s Road, SW10 0LR, 020 7751 4586
