At home with shoe designer Nicholas Kirkwood

Outside it’s a grey February afternoon but inside Nicholas Kirkwood’s penthouse, it’s a riot of colour. ‘When I moved in I did a bit of a number on it,’ the 36-year-old shoe designer says, smiling mischievously, sporting a light tan from a recent trip to Australia and clad in a Wooyoungmi bomber and Frame jeans. That’s an understatement: from the high-gloss magenta floor (‘I told the landlord that I was going to coat the floors a nice mahogany and slipped in a bit of reddy pink…’) to the tinted purple mirror panelling (‘just to bring in a bit of colour’), the Mayfair pad is a sight to behold. It’s certainly a welcome contrast to the usual aesthetic of the Balfour Place building, with its lobby featuring Vanitas-style oil paintings of ripe fruit, hung in heavy, gilt-edged frames.

It’s been 11 years since Kirkwood debuted his game-changing, gravity-defying architectural platforms. At the time, the British fashion scene was re-establishing itself as an ideas powerhouse, with Kirkwood and Central Saint Martins contemporaries Christopher Kane and Jonathan Saunders forging an experimental new guard. Today, with a revamped flagship store on Mount Street and lucrative backing from the LVMH Group, Kirkwood’s future is looking just as bright as his hyper-hued, two-bedroom apartment.

When he moved in three years ago, after a brief stint on Columbia Road, he enlisted interior designer David Cooper to transform its white walls. ‘If I move, I need to find somewhere the same height... or lower the ceilings,’ he jokes referring to a custom-made Pietro Russo shelving unit that reworks Kirkwood’s signature chevron graphic.

Together the pair have blocked out a colourful canvas upon which to display Kirkwood’s growing collection of art pieces and objets. There is the casual Jeff Koons sculpture in the master bedroom (part of the artist’s Dom Perignon collaboration) while in the lounge, a Keith Haring skateboard vies for attention with Eddie Peake’s mirrored conversation starter that reads ‘Make Me Hard’. Fun is a central theme with other highlights including a giant metal cactus fossicked from a second-hand store, and a kitsch ‘lips’ phone that he’s had since he was 18.

Lighting has become a Kirkwood obsession. In addition to two 1960s Sputnik ceiling chandeliers that hang in the lounge (a third has been rehoused in his Soho studio), there’s a 1969 Gino Sarfatti installation that commemorates the moon landing and another that looks like a hieroglyph (or Coco Chanel’s initials lit up in bulbs), a spherical sculpture by Enzo Catellani called Sorry Giotto, and Ultrafragola mirror by Ettore Sottsass, of the Italian post-modern Memphis Group, which illuminates the spare bedroom. ‘The original lights were broken inside so I changed them all to LED so that I can do them at any colour,’ he says, satisfied with the electro-disco effect he’s engineered.

‘I like things from the Eighties,’ he explains, ‘the whole era, whether it’s music, fashion or art, really questioned taste. It almost gets to that point where it’s so bad it’s amazing.’ He’s got more Memphis pieces stashed in the kitchen including a rather phallic looking rainbow-hued teapot and a couple of graphic vases picked up from the Sotheby’s David Bowie auction. ‘I love, and quite often other people hate, Memphis,’ he offers. ‘I once read that Memphis is a love child between Bauhaus and Fisher-Price, and they are kinda right!’

So what’s with the choice of Mayfair? The ritzy address feels at odds with Kirkwood’s edgy east London credentials. ‘Pure convenience,’ he smiles, citing the flat’s proximity to his store — a short stride at the other end of Mount Street (when it first opened he initially took up residence in the basement but got pushed out as they needed more office space). ‘It’s not like I’ve got a load of friends living around here,’ he laughs, although Lindsay Lohan is the noted exception, with whom he stayed while decorating. ‘When I first got it I thought it was a great place to have a party pad. Almost the whole building was empty for so long so you could pump up the music and nobody would complain. But now I’ve got neighbours.’

Does he do much entertaining? ‘I’m not very good at cooking,’ he confesses. ‘But I have friends come around and get the pans out of the cupboard.’ He’s eagerly awaiting the opening of Dean & DeLuca on Mount Street, while his local favourites include Kitty Fisher’s, Little House and Japanese restaurant Umu, ‘which you need to take a mortgage out for, but it’s pretty epic’.

Kirkwood’s oval Pietro Russo dining table may comfortably seat six, but you get the impression that his mustard Benson lounge gets more action. ‘Not a good look!’ he exclaims, lamenting a recent cigarette scar. Underfoot, a 1960 Barbro Nilsson rug, acquired from Phillips auction house, appears as though its former life was more likely spent hung up on a wall: ‘Yeah it was, and now it’s got fag ash on it,’ he laughs, half woeful, half amused, adding, ‘I try to look after it.’ Which may also account for the abundance of hand-blown ‘ashtrays’ scattered about. Turns out Kirkwood’s got a bit of an addiction to Murano and Portuguese glass. ‘Even at Alfies Antique Market [in Marylebone] you can find some nice little weird things. You’re not sure if it’s a glass or a vase, but I can always find space for it somewhere.’ I wonder how he feels about those Marie Kondo-inspired, clutter clearing converts who limit themselves to 150 possessions? ‘Yeah, I’m not really sure about that,’ he laughs, motioning towards the downstairs ‘junk room’. ‘Nope, it’s not my thing, never been much of a minimalist.’

Although born in Munster, Germany, Kirkwood has lived in London since he was 13, having spent his pre-teens moving around England. ‘My dad was in the Army,’ he explains, ‘which is probably why I get itchy feet after about three years and want to move.’ He enrolled in Central Saint Martins’ fine art foundation course, later dipping his toe into the fashion world interning with milliner Philip Treacy. ‘When you are doing the foundation, you do all of the courses,’ he says. ‘I loved fashion but I kind of hated sewing.’ He also studied jewellery, ‘which I very nearly went into’, he says, tapping two silver rings that he made when he was 15 and has worn ever since, adding: ‘There are a lot of similarities in terms of a structural quality to them both. But at the time I could probably only count five shoe designers that I had heard of and I loved the idea of creating sculptural heels.’

Practical training at Cordwainers college followed, enabling him to make his first collection at home in 2005. Now, his bold, sculptural shoes are an A-list favourite, with fans including Millie Bobby Brown and Jennifer Lawrence. In 2010 Kirkwood took home Accessory Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards and in 2013, LVMH bought a 51 percent majority stake in the brand.

He’s clearly still humbled by the investment. ‘They have so much experience in building brands and allowing creative directors to put their stamp on it and support that and not necessarily fight against it,’ he says of what it’s meant to his company. ‘I think the difference between that and maybe private equity is that they play the longer game and it’s not about selling keyrings just because you can.’

Indeed we’ve yet to see a single bag from Kirkwood. ‘With time that will come,’ he promises. ‘I would love to work on bags, but also go back to jewellery again. To me it’s quite obvious how I would do it. It’s just doing things at the right time. Having LVMH behind us means that just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should.’

It turns out Kirkwood’s ambitions aren’t just confined to the fashion world. ‘I would love to design furniture, for example,’ he says, ‘and whether that’s as a collaboration or just as myself hidden away, it’s something that I’d very much like to do.’ More seriously, he adds: ‘I’ve been looking into founding a studio in order to do separate creative projects, not necessarily to promote, but purely art therapy…’

Back at home, this spring Kirkwood is turning his hand to transforming his roof terrace, accessed by a swooping transparent spiral staircase. ‘That will be the next project — and then it will be time to move out,’ he deadpans, before trailing off into laughter.

5 Mount Street, W1 (nicholaskirkwood.com)