From rock stars to royalty: At home with Nicky Haslam

There was a period – in the 1980s, 1990s and Noughties – when anyone who was anyone had a house done by Nicky Haslam. The 86-year-old high-society decorator has a jaw-droppingly illustrious list of clients, from the King (when he was the Prince of Wales) to Charles Saatchi, Mick Jagger and Bryan Ferry. His decorating style is uniquely Nicky, impossible to sum up but instantly recognisable. “I don't have a definite look, but I've got a stamp,” he tells me.

“Whenever anybody sees my work, they know straight away that it's a Nicky Haslam room.” That's certainly how I feel walking into his Cotswolds home. A handsome gatehouse on Lord and Lady Bamford's Oxfordshire estate – his London pad is a flat in Earl's Court – it's full of Haslam touches, from the custom fabrics on the chairs and the imposing bust in the hallway to the hand-written notes from members of the royal family in the downstairs loo and kitsch coral lamps on the side tables. “I love fakes and funny things,” he says. “I bought that lamp in a tourist shop in Greece. And that yellow coral over there?

It's actually a bit of extruded plastic I found on a dump.” If Nicky's home is just as I'd imagined it would be – gloriously maximalist and wondertully inviting – Nicky himself is also exactly as I'd expected: charming and irreverent, reeling off one fascinating story after another while chain-smoking cigarettes. There was the time he ran off to New York in the 1960s with David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton, where he ended up working with Andy Warhol and landed a job as a stylist on American Vogue. “Though back then, I just called it ‘fiddling about”‘,” he says.

This was followed by a period in Arizona, where he went with a lover to run a ranch and become a cowboy. “I even learnt how to lasso.” A few years later, Los Angeles beckoned, where he worked in the film industry and hung out with Cary Grant and Clark Gable. “That was an extraordinary education,” he says.

His interiors career began when he moved back to London in the early 1970s, where his first client was Mark Shand, Queen Camilla's late brother.”ended up doing all these bachelor pads – for Mark, for [MP and Winston Churchill's grandson] Nicholas Soames, for [aristocrat] Harry Fane.

They all lived on Cundy Street [in Belgravia]. Having been in America, my style was very un-English. I wasn't doing chintzes or flowers. I had a New York, LA approach to decorating, so they looked a bit new, different.”

Nicky's work took off and he landed clients including a slew of rock stars. “Ringo Starr was wonderful to work for,” he says. “Our first job together was his penthouse on Cheltenham Terrace in Chelsea in the late 80s. It was very eclectic and chic.”

As well as transforming the homes of the rich and famous, Nicky – who readily admits to dressing almost exclusively in Primark – is known for throwing and dressing the most extravagant of parties.

“Decorations should be sort of ephemeral; they've got to be fluid,” he says. “The fun of doing a party is it's only there for one night and then it's gone.”He tells me about the time he recreated the iconic 1950s NYC nightclub El Morocco for Jessica de Rothschild's coming-out ball. “We had the white palm trees, the leopard-print banquettes, the cigarette girls – everything.” Another favourite party was for Simon and Laura Weinstock – parents of London socialites Tish and Celia Weinstock – held at Forbes House in Belgravia in the early 1990s.

“The house is built entirely in the Grand French taste and it has this amazing staircase, which I made look like a waterfall by covering it in bubble wrap,” says Nicky. “Then upstairs we had these huge billowing curtains of bubble wrap, all lit up. It was extraordinary.” Belgravia has always had a special place in Nicky's heart. His earliest memory of the area was visiting a flower stall just off Pont Street when he was 16. “I went there to buy some fake grass to carpet my room at Eton.

My room was a sort of showpiece – it had fake ermine curtains too. My tutors used to bring dinner guests to see it, like a sort of cabaret.” He was always in and out of Eaton Square and Belgrave Square in his youth, visiting friends such as the poet and critic Edith Sitwell and the playwright Terence Rattigan. “Back then, Belgravia was very theatrical.

It wasn't as smart as it is now; it was much more romantic.” Belgravia was also central to Nicky's work. At his interior-decorating peak, his offices were on Pavilion Road and he had two stores on Holbein Place and Ebury Street. “I always aspired to be in Belgravia,” he says. “As I stopped being very young and became youngish, it was the place to be.” He still likes to spend time in the area, pottering around the shops on the Pimlico Road, popping into Daylesford or dining at Boisdale, but he says he doesn't miss running a full office.

“I had wonderful people who worked for me – Beata Heuman, Cath Kidston – but it was a lot of mouths to feed.” The office closed 12 years ago, but he still likes to keep his hand in with the occasional project. The latest is for his new friend and Cotswolds neighbour Nadine Dorries, the former Conservative MP and culture secretary who last year defected to Reform UK. “She's moved to a place in the next village and she just said: ‘Of course you're doing it! It's been a lot of fun to work with her – she's a very extraordinary and wise woman, no matter what her politics are.”

Nicky certainly shows no sign of slowing down.Over our conversation he mentions various projects in the pipeline, including a new range of fabrics, a wallpaper collection and a book of photographs he took for David Bailey and David Litchfield's Ritz newspaper in the 1970s.

Then there's the album of crooner songs he released last year, One Night (Live at The Pheasantry, London), and his infamous tea towels featuring “The Latest Things Nicky Haslam Finds Common”, which have become the must-have Christmas present for the society set.

Retiring is definitely not on the cards. “It's the sort of job you can't retire from, if you can even call it a job,” he says. “If someone says: ‘What do you do?' I say: ‘I don't really do anything – I decorate.!'”

Nicky at home courtesy Simon Upton
Nicky and Mick Jagger in 2002 courtesy Richard Young/shutterstock