WE’VE BEEN FEATURED IN HOME CULTURE - designing a home around a lifestyle

We are thrilled to announce that we have been featured in Home Culture’s blog today!

 

A HUGE thank you to Kristina Thomas and her team!

Here is a teaser for you. To read the feature, click on the link and while your there check out her site. Happy reading darlings ...

Agatha Ozhylovski of Agatha O House of Design is a great believer in designing a home around the lifestyle. She says it might sound Zen-like, but she’s proven how quickly that lifestyle appears and flows into all areas of life, even business. Agatha has featured in South Australia’s SA Life magazine as a young designer to watch. Home Culture asks this Polish-born stylist about her design philosophy and how she got there.

How would you describe your design style?

I’d like to say lavish, but that’s a word that needs some context wrapped around it. In developing my style I have drawn from my European background and the Aussie lifestyle I embraced and brought them to this creative profession, which has allowed me to develop a signature style that can best be described as a fine fusion of interior design and couture fashion. By this I mean combining the form and function of interior design with the craftsmanship associated with couture fashion, to provide clients with the ultimate in today’s lavish interiors.

Tell us about how you were first drawn to interior design?

I can clearly recall when I first fell in love with design, and it still defines my life today even though I was too young to recognise it at the time.

My father came to Australia from Poland in the early 1980s. He had very little English, no job and no home, and with his wife and children back in Europe he had to find a way to bring us to Australia.

He lucked on a boarding house in Sydney’s Neutral Bay and a landlord who, as a migrant herself, empathised with his situation. She offered to help him with money upfront in exchange for renovating homes and apartments she owned around Maroubra and Rose Bay.

When I was eight years old and after only a few weeks in Australia, dad took us around Sydney and showed us the beautiful old homes he had restored for this woman. I can clearly recall their grandeur, exquisite decorative detailing and beautiful cascading gardens with views across Sydney Harbour and the bridge.

I remember being totally awestruck by the transformations, and on the way home I selected a rundown old house and redesigned it in my mind to return it to its former glory, until I fell asleep. On the next trip I would pick another home and do it all again, and I still do. The only difference now is that I do it for real for my clients and design around their lifestyle and taste. But best of all I get to see them live in and enjoy their homes. 

Where does couture fashion come in?

As I grew up I wanted to be a fashion designer, and for many years I designed, sewed and earned pocket money out of my own creations mixing colours, textures, fabrics and developing a signature style. Until it occurred to me that the houses I’d seen as an 8 year old were still with me, and interior design evolved into my true passion. ”

This comes back to a home designed around a lifestyle. With this fundamental front and centre, design is always unique and thus never dates.  I won’t design around the latest ‘fads’ as I believe if it’s ‘in’ today, it is already old.

I will add that it is a misleading concept that a designed home has to cost more. Yes, you do pay for a professional service, but a professional designer will know where to cut costs without compromising on quality, and where to upgrade to increase the value. More importantly, avoiding costly mistakes that affect more than just the home’s market value.

How has technology changed your business model? Today, I barely recognise my own business. I like to think of it as having downsized to upsize. Almost all my business is now done virtually, with a minimum of extra effort and at a fraction of the cost.

The technology has enabled me to work with clients, projects, architectural firms and suppliers nationally and internationally. The range of professional services I offer has almost doubled, and I could not put a figure on the volume of products I can have on display.

I spend more time on the road or working out of coffee shops, which, surprisingly, has made me more productive and has brought new enjoyment to my day. It still astonishes me that I can be sitting in a coffee shop enjoying a latte and uploading a post, and someone from the other side of the world has requested to follow my site, which they are reading at the same time as me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 A HUGE thank you to Kristina Thomas

 

 

   AGATHA O house of design – interior decoration & design is an award winning interior design Company in Adelaide, South Australia writing about lifestyle and WHAT’S HOT in the world of interior design, architecture, art and travel.