Harlequin London, Taking The Devil Out Of The Details

Harlequin London, founded by Jamie Horton in 1998, offers a unique service within the luxury interiors market, working closely with interior designers and architects, to help them source all the final details necessary to create a completely dressed interiors scheme. There are three core offerings that Harlequin London provides: tableware, decorative accessories and lighting, and with more than 120 brands on offer and its own supply of mouth-blown chandeliers, Harlequin London’s Chelsea showroom is a veritable Aladdin’s cave of treasures. It is set in a 4,500 sq ft showroom just off the Kings Road, called the Old Gasworks, with 13 members of staff.

‘This was not always the case,’ explains Horton, who founded Harlequin after six years with The 16th/5th Queens Royal Lancers, a medium reconnaissance regiment in the Army, which saw active service during the first Gulf war.

‘I had always wanted to run my own business and when I discovered this gap in the market, Harlequin London was born. The last 14 years have been hard work but the results are worth every moment.’

With their unique experience and understanding of this sector, Harlequin’s team can simplify the dressing stage of a project and guide designers and clients through the process of choosing the right tableware, decorative accessories and lighting to truly personalise their scheme, offering the most suitable options for the designers’ brief and budget.

‘Many interior designers focus on the bigger elements of their projects, leaving these essential ‘smaller’ pieces to last, then find themselves overwhelmed by choice,’ says Horton. ‘But without decorative additions that reflect the client’s personal taste and lifestyle, private residences can end up looking like hotels.’

This addition of personality through accessories can be seen on the 150 Harlequin projects complete per year, which can be anything from a 1950s Austrian chalet, which was ‘spectacular and not the Alpine norm’ to a yacht scheme where they can be asked to create a trunk and contents for a picnic set for twelve people, weighing in at 75kilos. There are also the scores of high-end residential projects for elite clients, such as a recent central London townhouse, where the style of the property was ‘classic with an Art Deco influence and a 21^st century standard of luxury’.

‘We were asked to dress the entire property to the designers spec and to maximise the selling potential for the developer client,’ Horton explains. ‘With the designer and client in our showroom, we went through every single area of the project and showed them the options that we thought were the most suitable. For the dining room, we used brands such as Christofle, Hermes and Saint-Louis to create a spectacular setting which we knew potential purchasers would admire and feel suitable for their home. By careful selection of both key and secondary pieces, we gave the client more than he thought his budget could achieve and after the installation, ahead of schedule, the client was so pleased that he came back and selected more decorative pieces, especially from Lalique.’