MOre About Alison

What led you to a career in interior design?

I’ve always loved beautiful things, so my first degree was in Textiles and Ceramics.  From there I became a fashion buyer, working in high-end womenswear, and that led naturally to opening my own boutique – Allylulu – which was on Green Street in Cambridge.  I ran that for five years and had so much fun doing it, but after I had children I decided to retrain as an interior designer at the renowned KLC School of Design in Chelsea Harbour, London.  It was the perfect choice because it combines my buying experience, my people skills and my eye for colour – I absolutely love it!

do you have a favourite moment in the whole process?

I just love that moment of handing a home back to the clients.  I get a huge buzz from seeing their delight in their new spaces and their realisation that it’s more than they expected or could have hoped for.  Sometimes I get to visit a few months later and see the family living there and making it their own – that is really rewarding.

That said, I always keep an idea of your home in my head so if I see something that might work, or that you might like, I’ll ping you a message or a photo and tell you about it, even years after we have officially ‘finished’ a project.  I’m always looking!

Whose home would you LOVE to design?

Well, Vivienne Westwood is my favourite designer – her sense of cut and colour is incredible, and she makes you feel so feminine. That said, I’m not sure she’d need much help designing her home so maybe I should just invite her for tea instead! 

Thinking more widely, I would love to work with someone with lots of antiques or heirlooms.  They are often beautiful (and beautifully made) things and you can really bring them to life again.  My Hills Avenue project was like that, and I get a lot of inspiration by going to Cheffins auction house for example where there are some amazing finds.

I would also enjoy doing some more commercial work.  Balzano’s was so much fun! I still pop in for coffee there.

What is your own ideal home?

 It would have to be a villa by the sea in the South of France.  It’s not very practical for my life at the moment but I really love the chic simplicity there.  There’s beautiful architecture, wonderful markets, great shopping … and the food … well, it’s incredible!  I’d have an open, bright, airy space and walk around barefoot.

What would you buy for your current home right now?

 It would have to be rugs and paintings – that’s what really makes a house, and we urgently need both!  I actually have some beautiful paintings done by my uncle, the Cypriot artist Renos Loizou, and I’d like to find the perfect space to hang those.   

You grew up in Cambridge … were there any clues that the young Ally was going to become Alison Carter Design?

 I come from a large Greek family, and my parents used to run Varsity restaurant on St Andrew’s Street, and my uncle and aunt had Gardenia’s in Rose Crescent.  So maybe a career as a chef might have been more likely at one point! 

But if I think back to my summer holidays as a child when my Mum was working the lunchtime shift at the restaurant and I was allowed to walk around town on my own I did spend an awful lot of time in John Lewis, looking at all the fabrics and the furniture!  I just trained myself to look and how to put things together.  I touched everything and went around buying and arranging things in my imagination.

It wasn’t the most conventional thing for a child to do, but it worked for me!

Where do you go for inspiration in Cambridge?

 My uncle actually has three works in the collection at Kettle’s Yard Gallery, and I will often go there and look at both the galleries and the house itself.  It’s both a very contemporary art space and an absolutely beautiful home filled with interesting things.  It originally belonged to Jim and Helen Ede.  Jim was a curator at the Tate Gallery in London in the 1920s and 30s and collected an amazing array of furniture, sculpture, pictures and objects.  He gifted his whole house and all its contents to the University of Cambridge in 1966, and after its recent refurbishment it is even more spectacular.

Also, just riding my bike through the city and looking at the colleges makes me very happy.  It really is a special place to live and I feel very proud to be part of it.