Inside Famous Homes at Christmas

[stirring festive music]

Hi, welcome to my house at Christmas.

Come on in.

[upbeat festive rock music]

I want you to meet my dear friend, Jeff Leatham,

who is responsible for designing this beautiful place.

He is the artistic director of Jeff Leatham Designs.

You are like Mr. Christmas,

but all year long. King of Christmas-

Yeah. But we have so much fun.

All my kids and myself look forward

to Christmas every year now,

because Jeff decorates our houses, and we get so excited,

so I'm gonna show you a couple things

that he's done this year that blew me away.

[upbeat music]

Really, the start of Christmas

is the loading in of the Christmas tree,

and it's amazing how much organization and production goes

into just getting the trees inside and getting them lit.

It took us literally like almost 24 hours

just to light everything.

'Cause we don't just throw the lights on,

we actually, we go in, and then we tie each branch

and we pull 'em in and we go out,

and then we climb up on ladders

and we have people holding people

and it's this whole process that takes days.

You know, you've seen so many amazing displays

in your home over the years,

so bringing the tree in is always like a big deal.

And I think one of the fun things is just deciding

on what the theme of the tree is gonna be,

because that sets the tone for the entire house.

I said I wanna do something with candy,

and he came up with this.

Yes. And it's like, wow.

[Jeff] The whole aspect of this beautiful black

and white marble floor with the red and white of the tree.

It's about shape, it's about color.

The theme is Kandyland chic.

Kandyland chic. Kandyland with a K.

[Kris laughs] Kandyland with a K chic.

Oh, duh. Exactly, yeah. Hello.

So you wanna show 'em the living room?

Let's go. [upbeat festive music]

So this living room started

with three beautiful reindeer that we found,

and when we discovered

that they actually had moving antlers,

that was really exciting.

We love these so much that he also recreated it

at Khloe's house in Cleveland-

Yes, exactly. This year,

which you just finished-

With live snow. A couple days ago.

Cutting down the tree in the forest,

exactly. I know.

Well, we don't have live snow,

so we did the second best thing, and he created this.

Look what you did here. Tell me about this.

Well, the whole design of this room is so clean and pure.

We really wanted to focus

and not take away from the room itself,

but add an art installation.

So instead of doing garland how we have in years past,

we created this sculpture.

We like creating things that obviously are Christmas,

but something that you could actually, like, leave up.

I love the stockings with the fireplace,

and it kind of just goes with the whole room.

And the reindeer haven't been named yet.

I wanted to do something obvious like Dancer and Prancer,

but Mason and Penelope and Reign

and Saint and North are gonna choose some names,

so I can't wait for that.

So now, the best thing this year for Christmas,

and the thing I'm most excited about,

is my beautiful red bear.

[upbeat music]

Jeff is very famous for these amazing magical animals.

He called me from Paris one day and said,

We have this shot at getting the guy

from Paris to make you a bear.

And they're actual pieces of art.

I mean, and you see, it's- Hi, honey.

We've never had one of these in the United States.

It was important for us that people saw the bear

and saw the tree at the same time.

They're an installation together, actually.

Mason decided it's a boy, and his name is Krismas.

It's Krismas.

So Krismas is here.

Christmas is really my time where we're actually able

to play with sculpture and design-

Yes. Yes. A little bit more, so.

So it's our most favorite time

of the year, actually, yeah. Yes, and wait till you see

what he did with my table.

So every year, I'm really kind of crazy,

'cause I like to set the table

and kind of leave it that way for the whole time.

[gentle groovy music]

I enjoy looking at my dishes and bringing everything out,

and it means it's the holidays.

This year, I went with plaid.

Plaid is very traditional,

and it reminds me of being in the mountains.

It's very Tommy Hilfiger or Ralph Lauren,

you know, that kind of a feel.

So I mixed the plaid with snowmen this year.

I found these great snowmen plates,

and they look so good together,

but then I really added the glam factor

with these gorgeous Christofle eggs that are so stunning.

And inside is an entire set of silverware,

which I did the gold with the plaid,

because I thought it was so dramatic.

You like to mix things together-

Yeah. So that there's, you know,

there's multi usage, and so-

And layers.

Exactly, so we wanted- I like layers.

To go off the colors of the plates with the snowmen

and obviously the gold.

Usually we do a lot of white flowers in the house,

but obviously this year, going off

of the whole feeling of the tree and the bear,

with the plaid, we used, you know,

just color blocked these beautiful mounds of red roses

with a touch of black calla lily,

just to add that naughty or nice Christmas.

You know, for us, it's really about whimsical,

it's about fun, it's about family,

so it's about sitting at a table

and just being excited to be there.

Yes. So that's why we played

with the roses hanging from the chandelier.

It's the tradition with that aspect

of mid-century modern and cool,

and so this is the table that I'll probably be at a lot.

Yeah. She'll be like,

Jeff, why are you at my table?

[laughs] Who let Jeff in the gate? I know.

I know, you just won't leave. He's just sitting there.

He won't leave. Yeah. He doesn't leave, ever.

We don't want to leave you guys,

but he's got a lot of decorating

to do, so. Yeah, we're running around.

Yeah. Thank you.

Bye.

[upbeat festive rock music]

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[bright festive music]

God, it's so cute.

[bright festive music continues]

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[chimes jingling]

When we first finalized the color scheme,

you were like, oh God, it's gonna be Oscar Wilde

by way of a Brazilian bordello

on his way to meet Marie Antoinette or something like that.

[mellow groovy music]

[gentle soulful music]

I knew I wanted to live in this area,

I've loved it round here for years,

and I grew up just off Portobello Road,

and I looked at so many houses,

but one of the big issues I had was the big painting

I have downstairs in the hallway.

Enormous, impossible to place in most London spaces,

and then finally I found this place,

and as soon as I walked in, I loved it.

[mellow groovy music]

I'd already been in touch with Benedict at this point,

kind of saying, this is my plan, please will you help me,

you know, realize-

Yeah, my dream. My dream.

My dream. My dream home.

What I really didn't want to do with this house

was have this, like, crazy idea, do it all,

and then in a year, 18 months, be bored of it

and wanna do something completely different,

and that's when you were so instrumental

in just stripping back my ideas and being like,

this is what it should be.

We started this by looking at what you already had.

Even, you know, when we got to the point

of the list of stuff that we did need to buy,

it was very much looking at antiques.

We wanted to be very selective about who,

you know, what we bought, making sure that it was

from a brand that we liked or from a designer

that we either knew or liked or was local.

The additional skills we needed in the house,

it made sense to go into our address book, really-

Yeah.

And champion the work of people

who we really love and care about.

And the project has taken just over a year.

Good things do take time, and-

They do take time, but I'm very ready

to kind of show everyone

what we've done. Well, darling, you know,

it was always about a party,

so we are gonna have the party.

Finally have that Christmas drinks party.

I know. Let's hope they like it.

[mellow jazzy music]

It's pretty decorated in here already, but it's-

Yeah, we don't wanna overdo it.

Well, I mean, do we not wanna overdo it?

Well, this room, I think we can overdo it.

Maybe we'll keep it a bit more.

This is quite camp in here.

Yeah. Really? I do quite enjoy.

Really? No.

[mellow jazzy music]

[soulful jazzy music]

The moment you come in, we had this amazing idea

that it would just be perfect

to connect the two spaces, downstairs, upstairs, together

with this vibrant kind of movement

that really recalled, you know, the sort of,

the palette work of the painting that's next to it,

and, you know, it really is another artwork in the house.

This one is called Cylinder,

and the small shards that you see,

we call them shards of glass,

they're actually picked up when the glass is hot,

so it's a drawing that's in glass.

You wouldn't know that, it's very abstracted

by the time it becomes a rug.

Being able to actually share this physically with you

is such an excitement, because, you know, so often,

you know, when something happens, it's far away,

you never really get to see it,

and it is really joyful,

and I think, you know- It's your welcome.

Yeah, it is. It is.

It's the perfect welcome, so thank you.

It's an invitation. Yeah.

[mellow heartfelt music]

Hello, you. Oh, hi.

Thank you for coming. Hi, darling.

Come sit. Thank you very much.

When I kind of told him what I wanted, Benedict suggested

that I got in touch with you, and looking into the,

and kind of recommended that I looked

into the Farrow and Ball archive,

and so we had quite a lot of fun going through the colors

and splashing them on the wall

and really going big with the samples

until we finally settled on what we kind of have here.

I wanted something that was reflective

of, you know, who I am as a person now,

as well as, like, lots of nods to my past.

So I grew up in Brazil,

so that really obviously informs a lot

of the brighter color choices in the house,

a lot of the vibrancy,

and then it goes into sort of more Mediterranean,

which is where I spent a lot of my childhood

growing up with my grandfather, which is more the kitchen.

The way you've layered the greens in next door

with the Bancha, which is from our current collection,

and then bringing your, as you say, your origins,

you know, living in Brazil and everything,

coming to this fiery red of Bisque,

which is just so unexpected.

But it's really beautiful, it's not oppressive,

it's not like, I couldn't live in this space.

It's actually- No, no.

It sort of wraps you up and just makes you smile.

I think we've settled on some pretty good choices in here.

You certainly have. You certainly have.

[gentle wistful music]

You know, my name, Viola-

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Means purple, but, yeah.

Well, strangely, we keep on- That's another story.

Yeah, yeah. [laughs] [Viola laughs]

It's very exciting to have you in this space.

This room doesn't really have a proper function

in some senses.

It's an attic room, it's quite low ceiling.

Because of that, sort of including your work in here

was very important for me.

This particular- Yes.

Pattern here, which was created by you,

kind of using some paper and some starch, no?

[Viola] Yeah, starch and paper.

It's like an old technique for decorative papers.

In fact, it even recalled the sort of,

there's a strange kind of enormous Japanese floor vase

over there, which has this kind of wavy rim,

which in some senses could be.

Yeah. Ooh.

Could be kind of almost horrible,

it's back to my love of horror charm,

but it all worked together,

and then the serpentine of this table.

And sometimes it's hard to really,

I know you get it, but it's hard-

Get it, to add movement to a room that otherwise,

it's quite- It's quite, yeah.

It's quite static. It's quite rigid in here.

[Viola] With decorative element.

[Benedict] Exactly, and because this is the end

of the house, I almost wanted people to be drawn

up the staircase and into a vortex.

Yes.

And I love how you use the shades.

The fantastic thing about your shades is

that they have a sort of slightly fugitive shape,

because the light moves around them,

so they have this movement again.

Yes.

And where do you find the carpet?

How did you find the matching carpet?

Well, I suppose, so this,

it wasn't really supposed to be matching,

but this is actually recycled office carpet.

This room, you know, everything is low in here,

and the idea is that people can come in,

they can sit on the sofa, there's some big floor cushions,

and you can kind of sit around

and play games or talk or whatever.

And we've worked together on a few things,

and it's always been a very- Yeah.

It's always been a very productive,

sort of subconscious kind of conversation.

Yeah, I think, yeah,

the great ideas come from conversation

and interaction with friends and other creatives.

Yeah, well, that's it, you know?

I mean, we spend a lot of time talking, so it's not unusual

that we should find some kind of synergy in our work.

[gentle groovy music]

[playful jazzy music]

Thanks for coming, guys.

So we're sitting here in the,

what we rather grandly call the library,

which kind of feeds into the whole country house aesthetic

that we were going for.

But this room came together quite quickly, actually,

in terms, compared to the rest of the house.

It was something that we were very clear

about what we wanted, but rather unusually, we,

'cause there's so much going on in the room itself,

we hadn't really thought about the floor

and about the carpet, and it was actually the last thing

that we put in was this carpet,

and we weren't even sure if we were gonna do one.

And then when you released your collection,

we saw it and thought, oh my god,

this is almost like it's made for this room.

A lot of people perhaps wouldn't consider a lilac rug,

and I think in a place like, in a room like this,

it makes it really special.

And as you say, it really completes the room,

because the greens sort of pick up each other,

whereas the lilac sort of feels special,

and it's a little bit eye catching,

but at the same time, doesn't scream or take over.

And weirdly, something you would maybe never think,

but I think in this room,

the lilac almost becomes a neutral-

Yes. Which is quite cool.

Mm. Yeah.

When we came and you pointed out these amazing tiles-

Exactly. Which I guess were

probably original to the house-

Mm-hmm.

And they've got that sort of Victorian,

kind of floral thing with the bird,

and I think the birds' wings picks up the lilac really well.

It's very cool that you kind of give birth to this thing,

and then it's no longer yours,

and you can kind of watch it go out into the world

and have its own life, which I think is quite exciting.

It's almost like watching, you know,

going first day of school type of thing.

You're like, bye, have a lovely life,

and then takes on its own little-

Yeah. Universe.

And then it invites you round for drinks.

Yeah, exactly.

See how it's getting on.

And here we are. Yeah, and here we are.

[light jazzy music]

[mellow jazzy music]

We're in the kitchen, which is definitely one of my,

if not my favorite room in the house.

I think one of the things I love most about it is the color.

It's definitely one of the rooms I spend the most time in,

which is ironic, bearing in mind I can boil an egg

and that's about it.

So what I tend to do is I tend to invite,

per dinner party group, someone who is an excellent cook,

and they take over as soon as they arrive,

which is terrible.

I mean, Gavin even, for example, tonight,

knew this about me and brought a cake,

knowing that I would've forgotten all about dessert.

So tonight, seeing as it's a bit of a special occasion

and we've got all the creatives coming,

I thought I would ensure

we had something edible to actually eat,

so my favorite local restaurant, which is called Ida,

which is round the corner, actually,

they're very sweetly dropping us some nice food

for us to eat this evening, which will be great.

[mellow groovy music]

Look how pretty.

Look how nice these are.

[Gavin] Thank you, darling.

Happy Christmas. Happy Christmas.

[Gavin] This is looking amazing.

It's very exciting to have you in the space, finally.

The theme of this kitchen, really, is very much things

that could be humble, but actually for me, for you, for Max,

are worthy of more consideration than some people might,

you know, normally bother to give something.

I mean, you know- Well, I think

he likes handmade things by the looks of it.

He does, he does, yeah, which is why we have rather a lot

of your ceramics in here.

I think I showed him one plate, and he just ran with it.

Actually, I prefer to see them

on the setting before you eat, in a way,

so that you see a whole table of them.

They look quite charming.

You fill them with food, they're not so funny,

but when they're naughty and you're eating-

[laughs] It's quite.

I might have to actually just slightly-

You could put a- Slightly, yeah,

I'm gonna just quickly do- You can put a cracker.

Yeah, I'll put a cracker,

a well-positioned cracker on there,

but, you know, you do get the idea.

They're quite nice, 'cause you can be a little bit playful

and a little bit naughty.

I think plates can be naughty,

because they're such a sort of domestic,

everyday, boring thing.

He has a good eye, that Max. He has a good eye.

I think one of the really fantastic things for me

about doing this project with him is that I've been able

to introduce other artists and makers who I love,

and he has really connected with them.

I think that is really one of the things

that this whole house has been.

It's very much not just been this creative collaboration,

but also, it's been about friendship and, you know,

not just my friendship with Max,

but friendship with other people, and, you know-

But it feels like it's fun.

Yeah, that's it. It's fun, fun.

And having fun, I think, you know.

I love it.

Which is so thrilling-

It's so refreshing. To be able to, yeah.

[mellow groovy music]

I always think, with any project, one of the things

that you have to do is you have to find the story,

and this was about making a space for you

to, you know, entertain in.

This has always been a kind of drinks party, in a funny way.

Yeah.

[Benedict] One of the reasons

why people just turf stuff out is

because they're not really connected to things.

Mm. And I've always felt that

if you have a strong connection to something,

you tend to really value it and love it for longer.

If you enjoy somebody's work,

you kind of really, you get enthused.

Often, you know, they see things in a different way,

and they offer a fresh take and a fresh perspective,

and that makes it so much more interesting

and so much more fun.

[mellow jazzy music]