Inside Caroline Sieber’s Colorful London Home

Caroline Sieber and Fritz von Westenholz are without a shadow of a doubt, the 'it' couple of our generation, after a much publicized wedding, they now are in the process of  making a London home all their own. Perfectly enough the couple are  expecting their first child. I guess domestic bliss is in the cards for our two nomadic twosome. 

"I think you subconsciously absorb it," Caroline admits, citing the profound influence of her mother’s taste. Fritz had strong ideas of his own, having imbibed childhood lessons in style from his father, the antiques dealer and decorator, Baron Piers von Westenholz.

Life brought Caroline and Fritz together... After a brief courtship, Fritz proposed, by then the couple found themselves on the  hunt for a new home. About their peculiar choice Caroline says: "Most people couldn’t see what I liked about it.  It was very dark and hadn’t been touched for 30 years." But a 1980s renovation had resulted in some ingenious interventions on the classic nineteenth-century floor plan, with double-height spaces and added windows bringing light into its darker corners. "When you walked in you just had this wall of green," Caroline remembers of the view of the evergreen garden through a glass wall, which she has widened even more, so that now, "even when you’re in the kitchen you feel like you are sitting in the garden."

Caroline wouldn't take anyone's advice because, "I can dress myself—why wouldn’t I be able to decorate my own house? It’s meant to be fun, right?" In spite of his own strong aesthetic instincts and preferences, Fritz gallantly surrendered to his wife. "I had a very strong idea of what I wanted," says Caroline, "and I wasn’t that worried about making mistakes, because this is for us, you know? So we went for crazy colors and lots of patterns."

The largest basement room has now been coopted to house Caroline’s extensive wardrobe, stocked with pieces from her designer friends. Clothes no longer in circulation are carefully vacuum packed or kept in the bachelorette apartment that, she sheepishly admits, she held on to for the purpose.

For her living room, she also fell in love with a Zuber wallpaper with a design of tropical birds disporting themselves in flowering branches and had it recolored to match the strident arsenic green of a beloved Rochas dress designed by Olivier Theyskens. 

Their Notting Hill home is the epitome of insouciant English country-house comfort with a dash of unforced elegance and charm. The attention to detail is of utmost importance to Caroline... Of her adventure she says: "It’s been so much fun. Now I can’t wait for the next project. I love that Fritz is interested in houses," she adds, "and I hope one day we’ll have a very nice country house. I cannot wait," she adds wistfully, "to start doing gardens." Of her perfect life, I say: "Caro-On!"

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