At the weekend the final ever episode of Channel 4’s Escape to the Chateau aired. Since 2016 we’ve watched designer Angel Strawbridge and engineer Dick Strawbridge transform a 19th-century French Chateau into an incredible events venue.
Over the last six years, we’ve not only seen the Chateau De La Motte Husson come back to life but also Angel’s interior design style evolve. While Angel’s taste has stayed rooted in buying second-hand furniture and vintage finds, Angel has seamlessly adapted her vintage Victorian style, to embrace new style inspirations.
On Ideal Home’s visit to The Chateau Angel revealed how it was The Chateau that had helped change her style since her days of running her successful vintage tea party business in London.
(Image credit: Chateau TV)
‘My vintage tea part years were very (and I still am) very patriotic, they were darker in tones, lots of taxidermy, all the things victorian-esqu. All the things that I still absolutely love. But there has absolutely been an evolution,’ explains Angel.
‘Some of the directions that I’ve gone have completely shocked me.’
Angel pinpoints moments where she saw her style starting to change, starting with the famous wallpaper idea she created for the honeymoon suite. ‘If you look at the wallpaper museum, the first thing that I did in design in the Chateau that I got recognised for, was led by the story of finding all the old wallpapers,’ she explains.
‘The harlequin and the circus, that was my past and I bought that into the current by cutting up all the wallpaper into the harlequin. That was really a part of the migration.’
(Image credit: Strawbridge / thechateau.tv)
A further step came when Angel was designing the potagerie suite. ‘That was my homage to Dick. I love all of the old symmetry, that’s always been something that I’ve been passionate about, but all the items in there came from the garden,’ Angel says. ‘The colours needed to be golden and green and light, so it was completely different to the stuff that I had done.’
The latest change she’s seen has come in the new designs for her Chateau by Angel Strawbridge range, available at retailers such as Wayfair (opens in new tab). ‘Dick was only just saying this the other days I’ve used a lot of moons and moonlight because when you’re in London you don’t look at the skies you’ve got light pollution. Now I look up and the beautiful big sky has been life-changing,’ says Angel.
(Image credit: Strawbridges / Thechateau.tv)
‘Seeing the bats, seeing all these things that were all fantasy before are all reality now.’
However, one thing Angel has stayed away from when allowing her interior style to evolve at the Chateau is home decor trends. ‘I think if you get too het up on trends you won’t do anything,’ she confesses. ‘There are so many trends at the moment, and then all of a sudden you’re out of fashion.
‘Stay out of trends, do what you like.’
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